Feedlogic User Group Highlights Customer Experiences

Swine producers from the US and Canada shared information on nutrition research and production efficiencies at Feedlogic Corp.’s first User Group meeting held recently at its Willmar, MN headquarters.

The company used interactive web-based technologies to connect customers from around North America with users attending the meeting in person.

Feedlogic’s customer base currently includes a number of different types of organizations experimenting with a wide range of production models, including traditional small-pen all-in-all-out grow finish, small-pen continuous flow grow finish, large-pen continuous flow grow finish, small pen AIAO wean to finish, automatic sort barns, and nurseries.

Starlite Colony of Starlite, Manitoba has a 600-sow farrow-to-finish operation and uses a Feedlogic system in a multi food court auto-sort barn with three group sizes (300, 400, and 550). Farm manager James Hofer said the Feedlogic system was being used to track feed intake in real-time, do trials on feed ingredients and phase feed. “We are sorting pigs into three sizes – light, medium, and heavy – and we needed a way to feed them differently,” he said. “With this set up, we believe we have a way to improve carcass quality.”

Swine Graphics Enterprises of Webster City, Iowa has over 20,000 sows and finishes pigs in company-owned and contract barns. The company has an extensive nutrition research program which currently includes three standard-pen wean-to-finish barns with four Feedlogic feed delivery systems. Research manager Jay Lampe said the company’s original goals with the Feedlogic systems were to expand research efforts, to minimize or eliminate human error in research trials, and to cut down on the physical labor of feeding pigs. “We initially installed one system around two years ago and found it met our goals,” he said. “We recently added three more. These systems are allowing us to do research in a number of areas including genetics, general nutrition, lysine blending, and looking at feed curves and consumption by time period. The best features of the system is the high level of customer support, the accuracy of the data and the ability to monitor the system remotely from off-site.”

Babcock Genetics is currently using two Feedlogic systems in a continuous flow finisher barn at their nucleus site in Wisconsin. Barn manager Keely Rykken said the systems replaced a “kitchen-style” centralized feed delivery system which was difficult to manage and maintain. “We are currently feeding out our boars in this barn and we need a way to feed each group differently because they are not all entering the barn at the same time,” she said. “We also need a way to feed each group to a different curve using two base diets. The Feedlogic system’s blending capabilities allows us to do this very easily. It’s much simpler to manage than our previous system. The accuracy of the systems is also important to us because a lot of the data they collect is used for research.

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