What is it? A wearable device that stops sows from accidentally crushing their piglets
Innovator: SwineTech
What were they thinking? University of Iowa student Matthew Rooda, working on a large pig farm in Waterloo, Iowa, in the summer of 2014, was distressed to find that a sow had sat on — and crushed — eight of her piglets, sullying what had promised to be a productive quarter. Rooda spent the next week thinking about how to dissuade sows from smooshing their offspring, and soon, SwineTech was born. The gist: When microphones pick up the sound of piglets squealing in distress, a patch on the sow vibrates to get her on her feet and off her young.
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How did they do? Rooda says testing in Iowa showed the system works 74 percent of the time, saving the farmers a lot of bacon. The wearable device can also track the health of the sows — a Fitbit for pigs, he calls it. SwineTech hopes to sell the data to feed companies and other agricultural behemoths. The company recently won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT prize for student innovation and is planning a soft launch at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines in June.