Chris Bomgaars: Telemedicine in Pig Production | Ep. 39

“These algorithms are oftentimes much better than humans at finding patterns from massive amounts of data. One algorithm predicts mortality events a week in advance and it warns users that they're going to have a problem a week ahead of these mortality events happening.” – Chris Bomgaars

Our guest is Chris Bomgaars. Chris grew up in Orange City, Iowa, and in 2008, he saw an opportunity to join the family pork production business. As he began to buy and raise feeder pigs, he saw the writing on the wall; it was time to go big or go out of business. The venture was a success and scaled from about 30 farms to over 350 farms and started raising over 1.5 million pigs per year (2018). As the company grew, so did the problems — from spiking death loss to sinking caregiver morale. In search of an answer to his company’s issues, Chris searched for a market solution, but none existed. That’s when he founded EveryPig, a pig health and production management platform.

What you will learn:

• Telemedicine and how can it be of benefit in the age of Coronavirus, ASF;
• The status of antimicrobial resistance and where it’s going;
• His thoughts on the ongoing rural veterinary shortage;
• Managing change throughout a pig production system;
• Artificial intelligence in pork production: current status and where is it going;
• What separates successful swine professionals from those that are not.

Bomgaars’ favorite swine-related resource: Swine it Podcast (thanks for the plug Chris).

Bomgaars’ favorite book in general: AI Superpowers

This episode was edited and published by Lauro Faccin.