Hope admits he was wary to jump into loose sow housing, but after moving sows into the barn and using the system, he quickly saw how well it works.

“Overall, we’re saving two hours a day in the barn,” says Hope.

FREEDA Automated heat detection saves time because Hope doesn’t have to walk a boar to check for open sows. Instead, the boar is in an enclosed pen near the feeder exit within the gestation pen. FREEDA’s RFID technology tracks how often and how long sows stop to interact with the boar.

FREEDA Dynamic ESF with separation reduces labor because Hope doesn’t have to search for animals. The system sorts out sows that need Hope’s attention, including those the automated heat detection system identified as open or sows scheduled to move to farrowing.

“We’ll enter sows to be sorted out, and within 24 hours, they’re all in the holding pen – just standing there looking at us and waiting to walk to a farrowing room.”

The dynamic group housing and precise, individual feed schedules also has other advantages according to Dahn. “In the groups the sows are able to walk around and are in good body condition prior to farrowing. The separation station automatically detects and separates the sows that have to go to the farrowing house or sows that are again in heat according to the FREEDA Heat Detection. So that saves us a lot of labor costs. With dynamic instead of static groups we can reduce the number of farrowing pens and it also gives us the opportunity to make better use of the farrowing stable capacity”, the owner explains.

User friendly software

Why did Nguyen actually choose FREEDA and not another feeding system?
“To me it was really clear”, Dahn says. “The FREEDA products are of high quality. It’s mainly made of steel, where other systems use a lot of plastic.
Also the software is user friendly: it integrates very smooth with our Cloudfarms management software. Another advantage is that the FREEDA software has a Vietnamese version, which of course makes it easier for our employees.” The local FREEDA distributor Peja installed the system in two weeks and trained the employees of Dahn together with the FREEDA application and support team. “Our veterinarian, our manager, my dad and I use the software for analysis. Once a week I perform a overall check via my smartphone. Our farm manager uses the program daily.

He and the staff receive a daily report with the most important key figures. And when we need technical support, we can always count on fast and friendly on-farm support from Peja and FREEDA.”

Striking differences

In addition to the group housing barn, Dahn also has 600 sows in traditional housing. The difference in reproduction results is striking. “The insemination rate is 92% and we have 28 piglets per sow per year in the FREEDA system. For the traditional farm this is 25 piglets per sow per year. Add to that the difference in feed waste and the higher labor efficiency and you are talking about serious money”, the entrepreneur calculates. In the near future Dahn plans to invest in the mating stable.
“Over there we still feed by hand. By investing in an automatic feed system we can reduce the workload there and hopefully improve the results even further”, Dahn concludes his story.