Successful EPP Congress at Denkavit

Last week the European Pig Producers (EPP) Congress took place. The congress was built around ‘Full chances ahead, in a rapidly changing environment’. Denkavit was one of the main sponsors of this congress and we got the opportunity to host part of the Congress at our DenkaFarm Innovation Centre. More than 200 pig producers were welcomed to our Pig Farm and Veal Farm, to attend an interesting program with presentations from different companies.

Backward integration

Klaas de Jong, COO of Royal A-ware, a large cheese-producing company, gave a presentation on our Veal Farm. He learned the participants more about backward integration. A-ware started as a cheese trading company but changed its strategy to become a cheese producing company, with production facilities in several countries and many dairy farmers delivering milk daily. Klaas gave valuable insight into the demand and supply of milk and other dairy products like cheese and butter. He also explained how A-ware valorizes milk in different streams (like biological milk, meadow milk, and farm milk), based on the demand from consumers.

Automatic weighing and feeding of sows

The other speaker was Ton van den Akker, a specialist working at Nedap, a company amongst others known as the global leader in farming automation using individual animal identification. He gave an interactive presentation on our Pig Farm and explained the benefits of automatic feeding and weighing of sows. He explained that without labor you still generate a lot of data which can be used for individual attention for each sow.

A sow needs to grow about 70kg during pregnancy. By weighing the sow regularly, its weight is easy to follow, while it is almost impossible by estimating the weight by eye. Then you are easily 20kg off at the time of farrowing. Based on the weekly weight development, the feed for the sows can easily be adjusted in the automatic feeding station and an optimal development can be guaranteed. Together with automatic feeding in the farrowing pen, it results in more weaned piglets per sow, while the sows are in better condition around weaning. It benefits the longevity of the sows and means more efficient use of feed.

In between, there was time to get to know each other and look around at our Pig Farm. Did you visit our Pig Farm already? If not, check out this video for an impression of what our Pig Farm looks like and what choices we made in the design and systems installed on the farm.

The EPP congress for next year is already planned, from the 10th till the 13th of May 2023. If you want to read more about the EPP, check their website https://pigproducer.net/home. If you like to learn more about piglets and nutrition ->

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