It began in the wee hours one day last June. Three young men were sitting in an Ames, IA, hotel lobby, anxiously waiting to see the automatic pig sorting system Farmweld would unveil that day at a breakfast meeting. One of the men, Pat Moore, was in the final stages of specifying equipment for two new 1,200-head barns. He could hardly wait to get a look at the system designed to reduce sorting and loading labor. Soon the threesome was joined by several others – producers, veterinarians and industry consultants – all invited to inspect FASTĒ (Farmweld Automatic Sorting Technology).

As Farmweld Owner and President Frank Brummer described the FAST scale and showed blown-up drawings of FAST barns, you could almost feel the collective reaction: This was swine equipment history in the making. Sure, automatic sorting scales had been dribbled into the marketplace before. But this was the first time a major equipment manufacturer had launched an automatic sorting system.

"For me, it was impressive. This is something that's so simple and yet such a good idea,'" recalls audience member Dr. Martin Mohr of the Swine Vet Center, St. Peter, MN. "During the presentation, I kept thinking how many places where you could use this system."

According to Dr. Perry Harms, a swine pathologist in the Texas Veterinary Medicine Diagnostic Laboratory, Amarillo, TX, it was obvious that Brummer and the Farmweld team had done its homework in considering how sorting technology impacted popular pig management systems. "The technology was being applied in a way that would be highly applicable to real life production. The floor designs, how it might be used -- it had been all thought through very well," says Harms.

Brummer explained the nuts and bolts of the FAST system and its programmable scale and he shared several possible design scenarios. There were layouts for 1,000-head barns with two scales, plus a single-scale arrangement. There was a layout that divvied up tiny wean-to-finish pigs in several early ration groups and a design that could sort 1000 head into heavy and light groups for more accurate feeding.

"Designing a FAST barn requires a totally new thought process," Brummer told the audience. "And this is just the beginning of what's possible."

Two days later at the World Pork Expo, people lined up at Farmweld's trade booth to talk about FAST and more than 150 producers, veterinarians and farm media packed the seats at two FAST info meetings. By summer's end, 300 to 500 people were showing up at FAST facility open houses near small towns like Kalona, IA and Jasper, MN. Brummer and Farmweld's Patti Uhrich got a flood of requests to speak about FAST and the company's website was hopping with hits on the FAST section.

"Everybody's talking about it," says veterinarian Mohr.

Yep, it is clear. FAST has fast become a phenomenon.

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