IoT System for Monitoring Breeding Sows in Swine Farms

Controlling the healthfulness of breeding sows is one of the most critical factors in pig breeding farms since, throughout the production process, the sows show continuous changes in their general condition due to motherhood. However, the existing approaches for estimating sows body condition are mostly manual and of low precision, which limit its automated calculation and subsequent management. To contribute to this area, we propose an IoT Information System for measuring and controlling the degree of sows body reserves based on calculations that use two actual physical parameters simultaneously: Live Weight and Back Fat Thickness of breeding sows, gathered from a smart-scale. The IoT system architecture is composed of three layers: (i) the perception layer conformed by IoT devices connected directly to an End Point; (ii) the network layer in charge of gathering the row data from the perception layer and transmitting them in JSON format to the application layer; and (iii) the application layer in which the data are processed and stored, as the base to develop a variety of services. We describe in detail the architecture of the framework and demonstrate its functionality and suitability with the implementation of a proof-of-concept that includes top services to allow users to visualize and evaluate the progress of the health of breeding sows in terms of Degree of Body Reserves. This experience allows extracting the current limitations of existing solutions and some lessons learned towards an IoT Information System that provides added values to the swine farms sector and serves as