A Winnipeg-area company providing heating pad and lighting systems for hog barns is set to add a U.S.-developed line of hog cooling pads to its product lineup.
IHT (Innovative Heating Technologies) Group announced Thursday it will make and sell a line of water-cooled pads that use a patented system designed at Purdue University in Indiana, to launch in the North American market in spring 2024.
The pads use two-by-four-foot aluminum tread plates over metal pipes that circulate cold water based on input from sensors that gauge whether an animal is too warm.
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The cooling pad system was designed by Allan Schinckel of Purdue’s animal sciences department and Robert Stwalley of the university’s agricultural and biological engineering department.
IHT’s active swine cooling pads “will represent a paradigm shift in hog production, increasing both operational efficiency and animal welfare,” Stwalley said in the company’s release Thursday. “We are refining the pads and their materials, currently testing stainless steel pipes versus copper pipes to continue optimizing their performance.”
In initial research, Schinckel said, the cooling pads led to a decrease in sows’ overall respiration rates, slightly lower internal temperatures and lower daily maximum temperatures. Sows also produced more heat, corresponding with increased feed intake and milk production.
Piglets in pens with the cooling pads also showed a 26 per cent increase in weaning weight and 7.2 per cent increase in feed intake, he said.
Boars in pens with the cooling pads also showed reduced heat stress abnormalities and respiration rate, in turn maintaining the animals’ semen quality, IHT said, citing Purdue’s research.
The company is promoting the cooling pad system as a timely addition given recent record heat in North America.
“Under heat stress conditions, lactating sows reduce their feed intake and milk output to attempt to reduce their metabolic heat production. In consequence, their piglet growth and subsequent reproductive performance is negatively affected,” Francisco Cabezon, president of research for U.S. livestock services firm Pipestone, said in IHT’s release.
“In boars, some negative impacts of heat stress are decreased sperm motility and concentration and an increase in sperm abnormalities.”
IHT said it ran a commercial assessment of the pad system under an evaluation agreement with Purdue’s Office of Technology Commercialization, based on which it made a deal for an exclusive license for the system’s manufacturing and sales.
A spring launch date for the cooling pad system will correspond with hog farmers’ preparations for summer, IHT president Chris Grant said. “That launch date will also allow us to compile and analyze final data from the boar stud tests, which will be available in October.”
In business since 1995 and operating at Oak Bluff, Man., just southwest of Winnipeg, IHT’s other product lines include Hog Hearth heating pad systems and IL-TEK LED lighting systems for barns.
The Hog Hearth system for farrowing crates is billed as a more energy-efficient alternative to traditional heat lamps, conducting sensor-controlled heat evenly and consistently under non-slip plastic casing.
Decisive Dividend Corp., a Kelowna-based investment firm focused on acquisitions in the manufacturing sector from “exiting legacy-minded business owners,” bought IHT in July for $15.5 million in cash and shares.
Partners Chris Grant and Matt Robins, who had owned the IHT business since 2013, have committed to manage it for at least the next three years.
Among Decisive Dividend’s other holdings are Penticton, B.C.-based Slimline Manufacturing, which makes the Turbo-Mist line of ag sprayers. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
