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Straw bedding in pig houses is gaining in importance, not least for animal welfare reasons. With OlliGES, Big Dutchman has developed a straw robot for the time- and labour-intensive job of dispersing bedding in a barn. The pig farmer can concentrate on other tasks. The new system determines on its own where and how much bedding is needed and distributes the material automatically. The robot can also spread bedding automatically at pre-defined locations. In the run-up to the EuroTier show, an international expert committee appointed by the German Agricultural Society (DLG) awarded OlliGES with a silver innovation medal.
The innovative OlliGES system is characterised by its intelligence and a high degree of automation: During the night, the straw robot moves through the barn, using a 2D camera and infrared light to scan and evaluate the status of the bedding. After this evaluating trip, the footage is analysed to define which areas require additional bedding in the next 24 hours. Bedding can be topped up very accurately, down to 600 x 600 mm small areas of each room.
As an option, the farmer can define the number of trips and the rhythm in which the bedding should be spread over the day. OlliGES is able to reliably distribute bedding and manipulable material with both long and short fibres, including pellets and wood chips.
The advantages of the OlliGES system at a glance:
- Work management: In a house with 1,000 finishing pigs, a farmer needs one hour per day to spread the bedding, according to the German Association for Technologies and Structures in Agriculture (KTBL). OlliGES can take over this task nearly entirely.
- Emissions: Defecating areas are topped up with bedding to reduce surfaces that produce emissions, thus reducing emissions.
- Occupational safety: Staff do not need to enter the animal area to distribute straw manually.
- Resources: Compared to manual systems, accurate re-bedding means lower amounts of bedding overall.
Previous technology: Previous systems are either purely static, quantity-based distribution systems or manual systems operated by a user. The result can be that the amount of straw spread in the barn does not meet the actual requirements, however.
September 23, 2022 - Big Dutchman
