Door Josien Kapma
FedBest; personalized diet for robust sows
A data-driven, self-learning model to feed sows individually, that is FedBest. It is offered as a service to farmers, with a subscription fee per sow. This is an episode in the series about the results of AgriVision Hack about open innovation in pig husbandry. FarmHack organized the hackathon for Nutreco in June ‘17.
Individual feeding plans and continuous health monitoring for sows, nothing special in the Fifties when the farmer knew his animals by name and was around, well, maybe not 24/7 but definitely 365 days a year. The entire learning cycle with ‘act-monitor-review-plan’ activities was done by a single farmer. Nowadays each of these activities has become separated and is done by several people. They each have far more data, but the learning cycle is hampered.
FedBest repairs this by combining data from different sources. The model makes use of data on genetics, feed composition, feed intake patterns; data originating from entirely different sources that up till now have been used and analyzed in their respective silo’s.
FedBest showcases the value of sharing data between different companies in the system.
The model shows that towards the end of gestation, individual sows start to vary in weight when compared to others in their group. When this variation in weight within the group occurs, individual plans became interesting. While the sow with many piglets needs nutritious feed, the sow with fewer piglets should not get overweight. Over time, the model will discover and quantify factors influencing variation in weight, by machine learning.
Farms can order these plans and more data-driven insights as a service, against a monthly fee per animal. This way, FedBest is within reach for large and small farmers alike. The good thing: FedBest runs a launching offer you cannot refuse, every new customer gets advice for the first 50 sows for free!
This is part of a series about the results of the AgriVision Hack 2017 organized by FarmHackNL. These are all posts in the series: