ON THE FARM...Robotic Mother Pig

Life can be tough for a baby pig. A mother pig (sow) can accidentally crush a piglet. Or she may reject a piglet and refuse to feed it. The sow may have too many piglets and not be able to feed them all, or she may not produce enough milk. These problems cause hog farmers to lose a lot of pigs.

With the help of NASA technology, the Farmatic company of London, Ontario, Canada has come up with a solution - the Farmatic Robotic Sow.

The Robotic Sow keeps piglet formula (milk) cool until it is needed. Close to feeding time, the robot releases the right amount of formula into a heating chamber. At feeding time, a heat lamp warms up the machine to hog-body temperature. The Robotic Sow then lets the piglets know it’s time to eat by grunting like a mother pig calling her piglets!

The Robotic Sow comes in two models - eight nipples or 16 nipples.

With every-day technology, the cooling and warming of the formula would have required a refrigeration compressor, freon, coils and cables, and a thermostat. These every-day heating and refrigeration parts are bulky, require lots of maintenance, and use a lot of electrical power.

Farmatic used miniature heat pumps originally developed by NASA for satellite cooling. They are only one inch square, have no moving parts, and handle both heating and cooling functions.

The piglets at top left are trying out a prototype version of the Robotic Sow. The finished version is shown above left. It may not look like a pig, but it’s warm and tasty like a pig, and speaks a piglet’s favorite words - “dinner time!”