The easy way to profitability

The Milk Taxi for Piglets is the long-awaited solution for a problem that has become increasingly present in today’s piglet raising operations: the technical implementation of milk supplementing the piglets’ diet!

For quite some time, it has been true that a sow’s milk production is unable to meet the increasing need expressed by more and more piglets growing faster and faster. By neglecting this milk deficit and relying on a prestarter only, you give away profitability potentials.

The continued rise of critical profitability indicators, such as number of weaners per year and weight at weaning, while undoubtedly bringing economic benefits, also raises many issues in daily operation routines.

So far only unsatisfactory possibilities to respond to this development have been available for daily practice: foster sows reduce the average number of weaners per sow per year because of the longer time to weaning, and daily weight gain is lower with artificial sows.

On the other hand, adding milk to the diet has been a painstaking and time-consuming extra. This is where the Milk Taxi for Piglets comes in.

• Healthy piglets in no time
• Profitability potentials leveraged
• Convenient piglet feeding
• No trial and error

Here's how it works:

• The powerful mixer dissolves the milk replacer in water in a matter of seconds, thereby preparing 80 or 120 litres of milk.
• The heater warms the milk automatically, at a time you pre-set, to the exact drinking temperature you desire.
• The practical chassis facilitates your job of taking the milk diet to the piglets (optionally even with an electrical drive).
• The battery-powered pump doses the exact quantity into the feeder bowl with the dispensing arm.
• The stainless steel tank and the pump are the reasons why washing is as easy as ABC.

Healthy piglets in no time

Profitability potentials

The fact is that feeding piglets a milk supplement will give you more piglets with a better development and a higher weight at weaning. On the downside, added milk means cost and daily work for feeding. Any down-to-earth farmer will therefore immediately look at the cost/benefit ratio. Does the added expense make economic sense?

The benefits

According to Hilgers and Hühn (in Bauernzeitung, issue of week 35, 2010), piglet operations in the Rhineland area experienced a rise of the weight at weaning by 0.4 kg to 7.5 kg with two added-milk feeding turns a day for 14 days. Concurrently, the piglet death rate went down from 9.4% to 7.6%, which is equivalent to an increase of the number of piglets per sow per year of + 0.4. For a 300-sow operation, these figures result in the following benefit:

The computed excess profit, then, amounts to € 3,812. The actual benefit, however, will be even higher because piglets that do not experience any energy deficit after birth, are healthier and stronger. Accordingly, they will be able to defend their teat and, as a consequence, the piglets that are fed added milk will also drink more of the valuable sow milk, which nothing can match in terms of quality.

Convenient piglet feeding

It is important to operate profitably, but your health is even more important! Give your body a break and leave the strenuous part of piglet feeding to the Milk Taxi.

Uncomplicated technology everybody understands

• If your operation cannot work with the same personnel all the time, you need uncomplicated feeding equipment. The Milk Taxi's functions are often totally intuitive. This means that you need less briefing and that the quality of your personnel's work improves.
• The time when the milk diet should be warmed can be pre-set. All you ask your personnel to do, then, is to feed the piglets. Pre-set feeding quantities and uninterrupted temperature monitoring minimize the risk of errors.

All functions at the touch of a button

• Whether you want to optimally dissolve the milk replacer with the powerful floor-mounted agitator in a matter of a few seconds or set dispensing quantities, all functions are available and settable on the control panel by simply touching a button.
• Additionally, it is possible to program the time when the Milk Taxi should start heating the diet. This is how it is working for you even at night.

Give your back a break when transporting the milk

• All Milk Taxis are equipped with a travelling chassis, in order to facilitate the job of taking the milk diet to the piglets. Even long distances are no longer an issue.
• Things are even easier with the EL-AN electrical drive, a battery-powered system that drives the front axle. It is available as an option for the 120 litre version. The drive enables forward and reverse movement infinitely variable between two speeds, easy as ABC.

Feed milk easily and accurately

• The practical dispensing arm and the pump calibrated for quantity allow you to dose the exact amount that is appropriate into the feeder bowl. All you do is select one of the five pre-set dosage quantities and press a button in the handle.
• The integrated battery gives you full flexibility, no mains power needed at the pig pens.
• The long hose lets you access conveniently the spots that are far away.

No trial and error

Of course, there always is a way to do it at lower cost. Feeding milk is probably the part of agriculture which is most prone to more or less creative trial and error meant to facilitate your daily chores: hand trucks redesigned with barrels, hand carts carrying churns, watering cans, measuring jugs, etc. However, if you focus on quality, just as we do, then the following information will be of interest to you.

Make quality your benchmark

• With everything you have to look after every day, it would be nice to have functioning equipment! Therefore, we manufacture every component to the highest quality standards, so you can count on us for excellent reliability.
• The high-quality, stainless steel milk tank is very durable and easy to clean. This is true for all other Milk Taxi components as well, by the way.
• If you clean the Milk Taxi and check its settings on a daily basis, it will be your reliable companion that will keep you satisfied for a long time. This is why we made sure that cleaning it and setting its parameters are especially easy for you.

Get an all-in-one, yet customised product

• Rather than requiring you to use different devices for various processes, such as mixing, heating, transporting, and feeding, the Milk Taxi gives you one single appliance that combines all these devices. No further investment is needed in most cases.
• Your needs and requirements are different from those of your neighbour. Therefore, the Milk Taxi is available not only in two sizes, but also with either the standard travelling chassis or the EL-AN electrical drive.

The standard equipments you can start with

• Milk Taxi, model versions 80 l (21 gal [US]), 120 l (32¾ gal [US]), with a versatile chassis with four wheels and a parking brake
• Ergonomic handles
• Tank made of easy-to-clean, polished stainless steel
• Lockable lid with sealing ring; opens to full radius
• 1¼" drain tap for draining without residues • Electronic control with liquid level sensor and thermometer

Pump assembly

• Battery-powered stainless steel pump
• Dispensing arm with ergonomic handle
• Maintenance-free battery and charge
• Electronic quantity control

Alternative, remote control

• Dispense button on the dispensing arm
• Working distance from the Milk Taxi up to 10 m (11 yd)
• Possibility to preselect the dispensed quantity at the dispensing arm

Floor-mounted agitator

• Powerful mixer
• Mixing at regular intervals in the course of milk heating

Electrical heater

• Effective full-surface heating foils
• Gentle milk warming, to avoid any burnt milk
• Model-specific power ratings (3 to 6 kW)

Optional Extra to Personalize Your Milk Taxi

EL-AN Electrical Drive

• Adjustable drive with two basic speeds
• Powerful forward and reverse movement
• Integrated battery and charger

Daily operating and general added-milk feeding tips

Priority One: proper colostrum intake

Make sure that the piglets drink colostrum milk early on. Attach the new-borns to the sow's teats and be sure that they suckle. Small, weakly suckling piglets need 10 to 15 millilitres of beestings given with the drenching bottle (plastic bottle with plastic tube). This will give them the strength needed to defend their own teat. Colostrum can be harvested using an electrical pulsation pump, the kind used by the way by breast-feeding women as well. Try again to attach the piglet to a teat 45 to 60 minutes later, in order to promote colostrum intake.

Milk supplement to feed large-size litters

Check the sow's teats. If the litter size is large or the sow's teats are underdeveloped, start from day one adding twice a day about 150 ml of milk per litter. Follow closely the milk replacer manufacturer's indications on mixing and feeding the product. For feeding milk as a supplement, dedicated plastic or stainless steel bowls installed on the grated mats are suitable. It is advisable to mark the quantity for a given litter on the pen separator or the sow record, for easier reference. When the piglets drink all the milk in the feeder bowl, the quantity of one turn can be increased, which should then be marked down as well. The bowls have to be cleaned once a day. The easiest moment is the morning, when the bowls are mostly empty at any rate. Moving piglets to balance litter size should be considered only on the first day and after sufficient colostrum intake.

A prestarter helps only together with milk

A solid prestarter supplement is an additive to the piglets' milk diet that does make sense, but it is unable to compensate for the milk deficit from birth. Milk is what the piglet is used to from birth, intake of a solid diet is something it has to learn over time. This is the reason why an appropriate milk diet during the first 14 days is so critical, because digestive enzymes will begin to act and, therefore, prestarters will bring their full benefit, only after that period. A possibility is to use the same bowl for milk in the morning and for a (small amount of) prestarter in the evening from one week before weaning. In the process it does not matter or even is helpful if some milk remains in the bowl (it dissolves the prestarter, thereby promoting intake). The amount of prestarter dispensed in the evening can then be increased consistently, while milk feeding in the morning continues too.

After weaning

After weaning, it is recommended to go on feeding prestarter for about 3 more days and then blend the weaner feed into it. The smallest weaners can be fed milk for one more week in a flat-deck pen.

Do I have to adapt my barn to use a Milk Taxi?

Since the Milk Taxi is a mobile appliance, all piglets are easily reached in most cases. Pay attention to a good condition of the paths on which it will travel and to any gates being wide enough to allow the desired Milk Taxi model to pass. If you prefer not to push the Milk Taxi into the individual partitions of the barn, you can extend the length of the hose and dispense the milk into the feeder bowls conveniently with the alternative remote control on the dispensing arm. The Milk Taxi is equipped with an integrated water heater. Therefore, an additional heater is not critical. The heating element can be set, through a timer, to reach the desired mixing and drinking temperature at the very moment it is needed.

What is an efficient way to clean the bowls?

It is common, but it is also heavy workload, to take the bowls out of the pen and clean them manually. An operation in Northern Germany using the scheme in practice has developed another, very efficient technique: the farmer has made a cylindrical "pot" of stainless steel that matches the bowls in diameter and fits exactly on the gun of his high-pressure cleaner. To clean the bowl, he simply places the "pot" on top of them and flushes them with one shot of the high-pressure gun. The pressure and the turbulent flow achieve a thorough cleaning outcome, while the "pot" avoids splashing. The pen remains very dry