Osborne to Unveil New Small Animal Performance Testing System at World Pork Expo

May 25, 2021 – Osborne, Kansas, USA – Understanding the correlation between individual animal performance at a young age and performance in the finishing cycle has been lacking within the industry for decades. Historically, methods of testing young, nursery-sized animals has involved individually isolating animals and manual, labor-intensive monitoring of performance characteristics affected by genetics, feed, pharmaceuticals, and other factors. These methods often resulted in inaccurate and biased data collection.

Now, for the first time ever, Osborne is pleased to announce the release of the first automated pig performance testing system for nursery-sized pigs in small groups. SaFIRE^™ (Small Animal Feed Intake Recording Equipment) automatically monitors individual feed intake and growth of pigs from 14 lbs. (6 kg) to 50 lbs. (23 kg). This automated testing in a group environment accurately simulates commercial production, providing data on individual animal performance for genetic, feed, and pharmaceutical testing like never before. The SaFIRE system leverages the technology of Osborne’s FIRE^® (Feed Intake Recording Equipment) system, which is the worldwide standard for performance testing of finishing animals. Completely automated data collection eliminates manual testing methods and provides access to real-world, commercially-simulated data.

The SaFIRE small animal performance testing system will be unveiled to the industry at the 2021 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, June 9-11. Osborne will be present in the Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Booth V451.

With SaFIRE, geneticists and researchers now have the ability to reliably and accurately identify the effects of various factors on the performance of small animals. Testing genetics, nutrition and diets, non-traditional feedstuffs, and the effects of various management protocols can be done reliably with SaFIRE. RFID (radio frequency identification) technology identifies individual animals at the single-space feeding station and automatically collects valuable data including feed intake, time and duration of eating events, body weight, ADG, and feed conversion.

The data collected with SaFIRE is available instantly for sound genetic research and management decisions with the WinFIRE RT^™ software application. Changes in health status or growth can quickly be identified with the application’s real-time monitoring capabilities.

Beta tested at several universities across the U.S., the accuracy of the SaFIRE feed intake recording system has been confirmed, giving researchers confidence in making genetic selections and management decisions for individuals or groups of animals.

SaFIRE is manufactured at Osborne’s employee-owned headquarters in Osborne, Kansas, and is backed by a team of technical experts solely dedicated to the service and support of Osborne’s automated livestock feeding and weighing equipment. For more information on SaFIRE, FIRE, or Osborne’s other automated pig feeding and weighing equipment, call Osborne at 1-800-255-0316 (1-785-346-2192), e-mail sales@osborne-ind.com, or contact us online.