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Cameras: another option for pork producers’ technology tool kits

Cameras are all around us. Phones, iPads, computers, Ring doorbells, all have become a part of our everyday lives and it’s difficult to imagine life without them. One Iowa State University faculty member is looking at how cameras in hog barns can help producers recognize sickness and behavior changes.

Joshua Peschel, associate professor in agricultural and biosystems engineering, is conducting research on cyber-agricultural systems that could assist farmers. He said consistent, reliable, accurate, and cost-effective health and behavior understanding of pigs is one of the biggest challenges faced by the swine industry today.

“My research emerges from the critical need for new and innovative tools that expand precision livestock farming for production-scale swine operations,” he said. “My students and I create new technologies, data sets, and computational models for sensing and sensemaking. In other words, we come up with new data sets, using only video, to better manage pigs.”

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When And How To Wrap Hay

Video: When And How To Wrap Hay

At Ewetopia Farms, we do a lot of wrapping hay for the reasons listed in today's vlog. However, there is always discussion on when you should actually wrap hay, what the various moisture counts mean for the creation of your sheep feed, how much wraps should you use, and when can you start to feed it. The answers to these questions are numerous and varied, but in layman's terms, we try to simplify the answers and give you different options depending on the individual needs on your sheep farm, or any farm for that matter, although our knowledge applies to our experience feeding sheep who are much less tolerant of poor quality feed than other livestock..