Animals that are raised for their meat are bred to be efficient in the conversion of feed into meat. Especially with the increased costs of corn and grains, it is important to carefully monitor the weight gain of the animal. Furthermore, for certain farm animals, such as pigs, it is desirable for all of the animals that are being raised in a batch to reach their targeted final weights at the same time.
Specialty weighing and sorting devices have been designed by Arlyn Scales for this industry. The pig sorter consists of an inner cage with entry doors and exit doors, along with some sorting gates. The inner cage is suspended from load cells and hung from an outer cage. In normal operation, the entry door starts in the open position. An electric eye detects when an animal enters the cage. The entry door closes, and the load cells send the weight signal to a scale indicator. When a stable reading has been recorded, the sorting gates will swing into position to send the animal to the desired feed area. If the animal is gaining weight slowly, it will be directed to feed that will provide it with additional nutrition. If the animal has gained weight faster than the others, it will eat from lower calorie feed.
The pig sorter collects data from each animal as it travels through. This data can be collected internally with the scale indicator, or sent to a USB memory stick. Not only is each individual weight recorded, but it is sorted by group. This data is used to calculate the average weight gain of all of the animals in the batch. More advanced options allow this data to be transmitted from the pig sorter to the Internet. Those who need to read this data, when given the proper authorization, are able to access it from any Internet connected computer.
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Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:19 pm