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Tattooing piglets is one of the most hated tasks by farmers. As with all demanding tasks, you have to be resourceful to get them done as easily and quickly as possible. On large farms, several hundred piglets have to be tattooed per week. If not well organized, it becomes the most difficult weekly chore for the workers, with the consequence being that it is often done poorly and the tattoos end up disappearing or becoming illegible when the pigs go to the slaughterhouse.
This is why, when visiting farms, one can see the different strategies implemented to do the said tattooing.
On the list of these "inventors," we find Stefano and Gianpaolo who, having a farm of 1000 sows, devised this device that can hold a litter of up to 12 piglets. They manufactured it themselves and it consists of a mobile "stand" where the 10-day-old piglets are placed upside down. A special device holds their hind legs and locks them with a spring system to prevent them from getting loose.
Figure 1. The spring-loaded locking system allows piglets to be quickly restrained.
Once the entire litter has been placed, three or four people work in succession to execute the tattoos:
- Ink, tattoo, and rubbing into the ear;
- Ink, tattoo, and rubbing into the leg(required for the parma ham production);
- Any scheduled health treatment.
Figure 2. The system allows 3-4 workers to work at the same time.
Organization is essential, so to facilitate the work, a central compressor and a pipeline that distributes the compressed air throughout the farrowing rooms has been installed, so that the tattoo gun can be quickly connected from any location.
Figure 3. The compressed air system runs throughout the rooms so that the tattoo gun can be easily connected.
