Blog posts tagged with 'Germany'

Billed as the world’s top event for animal production, EuroTier was held this past week in Hanover, Germany.  Producers from across the world attend EuroTier and for many it was their first exposure to American style production equipment as exhibited by Hog Slat.

We spoke with Hog Slat’s European sales manager, Kirk Brincks and asked about international producers comments concerning the equipment. He replied, “ Their general reaction is Hog Slat builds durable products that represent a good value.  They like the common sense design and how it is incorporated into the overall building layout.”

We asked Kirk what particular item was most popular, “ I would have to say the SowMAX dispensers.  All producers are facing high feed costs and feed saving equipment is important to them.  A customer, with sow farms in the Ukraine and Poland, has installed over 1,000 SowMAX units and is sold on the feed savings.”

He continued, “Another big item of interest is concrete slats.  We had many producers who see them for the first time and immediately comment on the quality.  I think people tend to view concrete slats as all being kind of the same, but we really do build a slat that will last longer.  Experienced producers seemed to recognize it very quickly.”

“And”, he laughed, “they always ask when are we building a slat plant near them”

Kirk finished up with, “The Grower Select line has caught on quickly. We have several production companies that we work with in identifying their high replacement items, providing them easy order forms and stocking those parts for quick delivery.   Grower Select just fits with Hog Slat’s basic philosophy of providing producers with a better value for their money……. in this case it’s excellent quality replacement parts that are priced right.”

I gotta to tell you, it is amazing.

EuroTier bills itself as the largest animal production trade show in the world. Held every two years in Hanover, Germany the show draws over 150,000 visitors from across the globe with 2400 exhibitors from over 50 countries.

If it has anything to do with animal husbandry, it’s at EuroTier. Robotic feeding and milking equipment, imaging cameras to digitally record pigs weights, BioFuel systems, manure processing equipment….digital this……computerized that.

Is all of it practical? Probably not.

But, as the global farming industry faces the prospect of feeding nine billion people by the 2050, we will need to embrace fresh ideas. We will need to challenge ourselves to develop systems that utilize workable technology with day to day reliability.

Hog Slat’s sales groups in each country work with local producers to create workable production systemsfor their individual farms. Hog Slat develops production ideas from around the world and adapts them to local conditions.

In an earlier blog post we reported the interest shown in the SowMax (see more….) at this year’s EuroTier.  Shown is German sales rep Ulf  Maroske as he explains features and benefits to a customer at the show.  We later received this email from Ulf concerning a customer who purchased 20 International farrowing crates and 50 SowMAX dispensers to fit on existing crates this October.

“When visited my customer last week the piglets were 14 days old. He placed the sows with the highest piglet losses in the last farrowing in the Hog Slat International crates. He told me had piglet losses of .6 per sow in the new crates compared to 1 piglet per sow in the old crates. This is nice result.”

“When I asked him how satisfied he is with our SowMAX he gave me the short answer.  Today he regrets that he installed 50 of them…if he had know the SowMAX worked so well he would have equipped all 90 farrowing crates with them.”

“Compared to his other feeding system he has significantly less feed wastage.  Now the sows eat more, the amount is 10kg (22 lbs.), that was not possible before. The sows are much quieter during feeding time”

To see (more…..)