When you have entered you inventory numbers, utopia would be that the balance is perfect. But now and then it happens that the equation fails. Here are some hints to help you read and understand the numbers.
Go to "Report" - "E control" and click "Calculate".
Click on the "Balance" tab as shown below:
At the left side you can see the column “Added” which means: All animals that have been added to the herd – starting with the last period's end status.
At the right side under the column “Subtracted” you can see all animals who have left the herd ending with your current status.
When the numbers in the blue columns are the same the balance is perfect.
Boars
In this herd 2 boars have been bought and 1 boar have been sold in the period. All breeding stock, who are leaving the farm alive are mentioned as “Sold”.
If you double-click on the number, a new window appears, where you can see the animals that are calculated, and you can see the type of the exit.
Sows
When looking at the balance for sows, there is usually more columns to consider.
On the left side "Added":
- Status: In this herd there were 329 sows at the last stocktake.
- Bought: No sows bought in the period.
- Transferred: 42 gilts have farrowed in the period and are now sows.
- Total: 329 at status + 0 bought + 42 transferred = 371 sows.
On the right side "Subtracted":
- Sold: Number of sows, who have been removed from herd while still alive In the period.
- Dead: Number of sows, who are dead or who have been euthanised in the period.
- Total: 28 sold + 12 dead + 331 counted at inventory this time = 371 sows.
Gilts
The set-up is the same as the sow set-up.
39 maiden gilts who have been served in the period have now become ”gilts” and are therefore added to the number of gilts.
If you have a quantity in the column “bought”, then you have a registration of a maiden gilt with an entry date after the service date.
Here you can double click and you can easily find the animal and correct if it is a mistake.
Maiden Gilts
These are the maiden gilts who have a sow number but are not yet served.
Maiden gilts (location)
These are the number of animals who are in a location, which is included in the production report.
Maiden gilts (location) will show slaughtered animals in a separate column. This is column is not part of the standard layout.
Suckling piglets
Suckling piglets, who are added in the period, must be the same number as born piglets. Those who are subtracted are the same as the number of weaned.
In the example above, the E control has a "Nursery" attached and all nursing piglets are weaned and transferred to this location. This means that number of animals, who have been weaned, are the same as the number of animals going into the nursery. Here you can often see mistakes as not all nursing piglets have been put into the correct location.
It is your choice whether the difference in the number of suckling piglets should be shown as dead or as a difference.
In the menu "General" – "Set up" – "Calculation" – "Other", you can select how differences of piglets should be handled in the column “Dead”. Please note, if you exchange data with Topigs this setting can influence on your logging of data in connection with weaning.
You can also choose to register all dead suckling piglets either on each sow in the menu ”Sows/Boars” – “Dead piglet”, at the sow card or in the menu “Sows/Boars” – “Dead piglet group”.
Note, the key figure that is shown on the E-control as “Mortality %” is not affected by the dead piglets in the balance as the key figure is calculated on basis of the difference between the the weaned sows liveborn piglets and the total number of weaned piglets in the period.