Excellence in Management Starts with Full Potential Alarms

If you’ve ever dealt with a major breakdown of equipment in your barn, you know how frustrating it is to experience the disruption it has on your entire operation. Feed outages, a water pipe burst, flooded litter, a broken barn curtain. The list goes on, and so do the costs you’re burdened with during the aftermath.

Preventing these problems from jeopardizing the viability of your operation starts with having a reliable alarm system that provides real-time, remote visibility into your barns.

Knowing the conditions inside your livestock facilities, and whether or not your animals are getting feed and water, can only be possible if you have reliable connectivity.

In today’s world, it's hard to imagine life without having connectivity, from how we communicate and share information, to the way we purchase goods. For so many of us, connectivity is essential for how we run everyday life. The same goes for successfully managing today’s livestock operations and making production more efficient than it was yesterday.

The reality is that most growers, integrators, and producers are not using an alarm system with a stable connection.

Today, 60% of farmers in the U.S. have unreliable internet, and most are depending on cell service or hotspots that no longer function due to the end of the 3G network in 2022.

Producers that are using barn alarms connected via landline, the internet, or a hotspot are relying on a single connection point that could fail during a storm, when the modem or network tower goes down, or by simply being located in a rural area. Landlines used by most traditional barn alarms have been put out of service in rural areas altogether.

A full potential barn alarm that doesn’t rely on a single connection point like a landline or hotspot is built to ensure you always have a backup connection and prevents you from depending on a single lifeline to monitor your barn. It also allows producers to monitor power, temperature, water flow, feed, and other key functions inside their barn remotely and in real-time so they can get ahead of operational inefficiencies and stem losses.

Whether a power outage shuts down your barn’s feeding system, or a burst water pipe threatens to flood out your barn, using a reliable alarm with real-time visibility into the conditions of your barn can stem losses and prevent mortality.

Along with providing real-time visibility that can prevent catastrophic losses, full potential alarms deliver reliable data that producers can use to better manage their operations and make more informed production decisions.

Data that tells you how much water your animals are drinking, how much feed they’re consuming, and how much they’ve grown can provide direct insight into where your operation stands every month, every day, and even every hour.

Data is the most powerful tool you can use as a grower to forecast your production outcomes with greater precision. By monitoring trends in water consumption, you can predict the onset of an illness in their herd or flock and help prevent mortality. Analyzing long-term trends in feed intake as it compares to average daily weight gain helps you to more accurately schedule when to send your animals to market.

Effective barn management hinges on having a full potential alarm that’s powered by reliable connectivity and capable of monitoring the conditions of your barn in real-time, from anywhere in the world.

Having full visibility into your barns and the data to better inform your decision-making will put you on track to managing your operation more efficiently than ever before.

Sources:

• Pork Gateway (2023). The Basics of Swine Barn Maintenance.
• The Poultry Site (2012). Poultry Litter Management.
• Pork Checkoff. Water Consumption and Conservation Techniques Currently Available for Swine Production.