Amos Wollman, Jr., tracks how his pigs are doing in the barn on this monitor in his home. With the FAST™ (Farmweld Automatic Sorting Technology) system, he’s achieving less sort loss and expects to consistently sell heavier pigs without going over his packers' upper weight limits.

Amos Wollman, Jr., likes to know things in real-time and he’s enlisted a variety of technologies at his Carpenter, SD, farm to keep him current. For example, a video camera mounted in his new swine finishing facility, connected wireless to a monitor in his home, lets him keep an eye on his pigs when he’s not in the barn.

“ If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can check and see how my pigs are doing,” Wollman says. “I really like that.”

Wollman’s new swine facility is equipped with the FAST™ (Farmweld Automatic Sorting Technology) system. Wollman, who is a member of the Fordham Colony, says he enjoys watching the pigs going through the scale and eating in the food courts. The camera has also made it easy to accommodate the many visitors that have wanted to tour the barn.

To get an up-to-the minute peak at the performance of his pigs, Wollman has interfaced FAST with his personal computer. From his desk in his office, Wollman can monitor the average weight of pigs crossing the scale, average daily gain and individual weights. Wollman says FAST will allow him to do a better job of managing feeding programs. “I’m spending a lot of money on genetics,” says Wollman. With weight information during the feeding period and the option of split-weight feeding, he says he thinks he’ll be better able to maximize the genetics with proper nutrition. “I can feed the two groups and tell the mill to grind according to what I want,” he says.

Beyond providing real-time performance data, Wollman views FAST as an important marketing tool. The system allows Wollman to accurately select pigs to match packer premiums. Before using FAST, Wollman says his sort losses were higher than he liked. With FAST, Wollman expects to reduce his sort loss, and he expects to sell heavier pigs consistently without going over his packer’s upper weight limits. Recently he shipped a small load of 40 pigs from his new FAST facility and achieved zero sort loss.