Management and training on new farms

Planning & management, production practice and staff training must be closely connected during the beginning stage of a farm, in order to reach breeding target and even production.

Planning and management

Planning and management is the guideline for reaching the goals, production practice is the means, while training provides guarantees and should be done through the whole process. The better the farm’s management and staff are prepared, the better the farm start-up and the better the farm will operate throughout the life time of the farm.

During planning and management, it is very important to check the animal flow of the farm, and decide the production target based on genetic line, biosecurity level, technical skills of the staff. The targets set should be reachable within half a year, and should not be too high or too low.

Michael Ellermann (middle), of Carthage & MHJ Agritech doing his advisory work on a Chinese pig farm. Photo: Carthage & MHJ Agritech Consulting

Right management software

And also at the same time, choose the right management software, such as Porcitec, Agrosoft or Cloudfarms, which can help improve efficiency by pinpointing areas that can be improved during production. Besides efficiency software, it is also necessary to establish a whole set of visual management systems to improve communication efficiency between staff.

The production practice during the beginning stage mainly concentrates on gilt developing unit management, boar stud management and production plans and implementation of visual management.

Animal flow and biosecurity

Training about management of animal flow, biosecurity can be arranged before pig enters the farm, while the rest should be in accordance with the production pace. For each production routine, one staff should be certified to do the job. This is done by the staff doing a work process a certain number of times and approved before they are certified. The certification can be done half a year or yearly as follow-up.

This article is the second in a series on how to design new pig farms? It is also a summary of a presentation given at the Pork Production Conference in Beijing, China, early September 2016. Last week, the first summary was published, and next week the last summary will be published. Want to read them all at once? Then simply download this whitepaper.