Recently, Rob Brenneman retrofitted a 1.000-head building with two FAST scales.

Rob Brenneman is a classic hands-on manager. Over the years, sorting and loading hogs for market was a job he has stayed very involved with at his Washington, IA, operation. Brenneman Pork sells pigs every day and “tops-out” one load of pigs prior to closing out each finishing group. Brenneman estimates it takes three people about an hour to mark and load one 180-pig truckload. When sorting isn’t necessary, it takes three people about a half hour per load to move pigs to the truck.

When Brenneman heard about FAST™ (Farmweld Automatic Sorting Technology) last summer at World Pork Expo, he was instantly intrigued. The scale eliminated the need to mark pigs. It would also accurately select the heavy weights he was after. Even better, Brenneman figured, than he could do with his own set of experienced eyeballs. Within weeks, Brenneman ordered two FAST scales to be retrofitted into a 1,000-head building he owns. One of Brenneman’s growers, Allen Kos, also ordered two scales for a new facility.

In addition to easing his To Do list, Brenneman says he liked the option FAST provided for managing large pens. He had not previously adopted the use of large pens because he felt they would be difficult to sort out of and manage. But he thinks large pens offer several social advantages including less fighting and potentially less death loss. “Having big pens gives the pigs plenty of room to spread out and get away from each other,” says Brenneman.

Fewer pens and less gating will also make it easier for his employees and growers to check pigs, according to Brenneman. “No one likes to have to crawl over gates all the time and this nearly eliminates that,” he says.

While Brenneman expects FAST to reduce his time sorting and loading, he admits he had a lot of fun just standing and watching pigs begin using the FAST system. “It was cool,” he says. “Within an hour, we had 50 pigs walking through the scale to the food court. They’ve got it figured out.”