Dealing with Feed Interruptions

I woke up this morning and saw an email alert from a hog site that we had a feed line hung up and was running continuously in an empty state since about 2am the night before.  This is an indication of a feed interruption.  Grovestreams alerting engine has several different ways it processes alerts, which is nice because over-alerting is a big issue in remote monitoring applications.  Grovestreams has thought of this and has functions such as dwell, latency, time-filters and other factors to eliminate unwanted alerts and only gives you the ones you need.

The way our system is set up is that the gateway sends a message to Grovestreams every 15 minutes that this running empty feed line state is being met.  Upon arrival in the database, I get an email notifying me of the situation, reminding me every 15 minutes until the situation is eradicated.

This past weekend we had several issues like this.  2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday.  It seems to happen most frequently when the tandem bins are being switched.  Indications of poor feed flow.  The barn manager believes the feed is ground to fine and doesn't flow properly.  Yours truly climbed each of the 12 feed bins on site and saw for myself feed clumping to the side of the bins and not flowing.  I even took a short youtube video to document what I was seeing in one of the bins.  In the video you can also see my high and low sensors.

One item worth noting on this issue at this site that gives me some pause before suggesting a coarser grind or a bin-beater is the solution to our feed flow issues:

1.  The bins are not being completely emptied between deliveries.  These pigs are still relatively small, 90 lbs.  Going through perhaps 2-3 tons per day per group.  The barn manager who is scared to run out of feed is ordering feed very aggressively and this has resulted in delivering feed on top of feed often.  See the chart below which represents a high and a low sensor in the bin.  100 means the bin is completely full of feed.  50 means its somewhere in the middle and 0 means feed is below the cone.  If you look at my video you can see about how it is laid out.

This shows me that since the turn started in July, one of the feed bins in the tandem set has not emptied below the cone before receiving the next order of feed.  This is potentially disrupting the nutrition plan and possibly contributing to feed flow issues.  Old feed clumps easier and doesn't flow.  Additionally, logistics issues arise when the feed in the truck doesn't fit in the bin it belongs to.  All breakdowns in the feed process which add cost.

Solutions:  

1.  Monitor feed flow issues, document what the cause is potentially include a feed flow documentation module to the mobile app.  

2.  Fix feed ordering.  Ordering feed is not an easy task for a barn manager.  There are many factors to consider and timing it correctly to fit the feed mill's schedule is not a simple task.  Going forward, having the software manage the feed ordering will improve that process a great deal.  By fully emptying the bins we can know for certain that older feed is not clogging the bin from flowing properly.  Grovestreams uses data from all types of streams - sensors, app, and software which gives us a remarkably accurate estimate of feed on site and predictions on when it may go empty.