| Buildings
New service picks up piggery problems
Eight months without a piggery fan working. Easy to spot? No! Fans are often set to work in sequence and may be
idle for pre-determined periods – which was why an East Anglian farmer failed to notice it. However, this fault was
picked up by professional analysis of the data provided by the farm’s monitoring system.
new “pro-active”
service being
offered by ARM
Buildings is now
routinely picking
up malfunctions
such as these and also alerting pig
farmers when their piggeries need
servicing.
“Our Barn Report Pro
monitoring system has proved to
be extremely popular but farmers
don’t always study the data
provided in enough detail, so can
miss vital clues when something is
not quite right in their piggeries,”
commented Tim Miller, ARM’s
environmental specialist.
Recently, many farms have
been visited for physical testing of
air pressure, inlet speeds and
other key functions on houses that
have been running for a few years.
This has then been compared with
data from the monitoring printouts.
“We found a good correlation and
now all ARM sites are being
checked by undergraduate-on-
placement, Liv Hartshorn, on a
daily basis. Farmers are contacted
if there is a problem. Sometimes it
A
www.farmingmonthly.co.uk
is as simple as the cables
stretching so the inlets don’t open
sufficiently,” said Tim.
“Detailed pressure-testing and
other checks are carried out when
new piggeries are commissioned,
but piggery ventilation systems
need regular servicing and we can
pick up when this is overdue,” he
added.
January 2018 | Farming Monthly | 13