An Application for Early Detection of Growth Rate Changes in the Slaughter Pig Production Unit

This contribution describes a new method for monitoring productivity in the slaughter pig production unit. The method is implemented as a stand-alone application, based on data from an existing farmmanagement system. With the new method the amount of information increases from quarterly to weekly estimates of daily gain. By calculating average daily gain each time a group of slaughter pigs is delivered to the slaughterhouse, a time series is made. Among other features, the application allows the user to monitor the time series graphically. Monitoring data from various herds have shown some uctuation in the series, therefore the user may choose to smoothen the graph by means of a Kalman lter technique.