PigSurfer- SURveillance, FEedback & Reporting within ProPIG for communication with 75 pig farmers

Summary

The Core0rganic2 research project ProPIG is carried out in 75 organic pig farms in 8 Europeancountries (AT; CH; CZ; DE; DK; FR; IT; UK) to improve animal health, welfare and nutritionusing farm customised strategies. For future on-farm application (e.g. advisory/certificationactivities which are carried out during one day visits), an automatic recording and feedbacktool was developed. This should allow on-farm data collection, import of data into a databaseand the possibility for benchmarking, including a printed output for the farmer to facilitateimmediate discussion of results and improvement strategies. To document not only animalhealth and welfare, but also integrate diet composition and productivity data, it was important tochoose key indicators from ali a reas, which would be available actoss ail eight countries. Basedon existing on-farm welfare assessment protocols (e.g. WelfareQuality-, CorePIG) indicatorswere selected by the consortium, which were then transferred into a Software programme('PigSurfer'). This Software is available as Desktop- or Android version to be used on TabletPCs, so that on-farm data (interview with farmer; direct observations on weaners, finishers,sows; productivity and treatment records; feed) can be entered directly. During two visits adatabase was built and a 'Farm report' was printed for each farm including benchmarkingof results for feedback and discussion with the farmer. After a year 'PigSurfer' was used tocarry out the following complete process during one day visits across Europe: Surveillanceof health and welfare, feedback of data in comparison with results from the previous year asweil as benchmarking with 75 other pig far ms and prin ting a report. 'PigSurfer' is a promisingtool for communicating health and welfare, as it provides not only a database, which can becontinuously extended, but is an important step to move from research to on-farm applicationacross Europe.