Perry County, PA, contract
grower Mark Leinbach has used automatic
sorting for the past three years and recently
installed the FAST II system in a remodeled
barn. The barn is a food court style facility
with two feed lines for split-weight feeding.
“This allows me to feed a ration according to
the weight of the pigs,” says Leinbach. “I can
feed a light ration a little longer on the light
food court and move on to a new ration a
little sooner for the heavies.”
Leinbach followed Farmweld’s protocol for
training pigs carefully, and he says it worked
as indicated. After three “training” sessions
which Leinbach set up using the FAST II scale’s Training Mode, it was obvious pigs
were learning to use the scale. After those
formal training sessions early in the feeding
period, Leinbach operated the scale for two
or three intermittent sessions per week for
the remainder of the feeding period. “So far,
so good,” says Leinbach.
Pigs in Leinbach’s barns are owned by
Country View Family Farms, a division of
Hatfield Quality Meats. Leinbach says he
incorporated automatic sorting for a variety of
reasons, including the ability to ship pigs that
match Hatfield’s preferred weight ranges.
“They like them 210 to 272 pounds,” says
Leinbach who adds there is an extra bonus
for pigs in the tighter window of 249 to 262
pounds.
As of press time, Leinbach was in the midst of
selling the first group of pigs from the facility.
“The pigs moved very well and loaded out
nicely,” he says.
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