Hog raising is a very popular enterprise in the Philippines such that there is a proliferation of backyard producers, which dominates the swine industry and a healthy viable commercial sector. Despite the crises facing the swine industry, still many people are venturing in this enterprise. Piggeries are type of factory farm specialized for raising of pigs up to slaughter weight. Some people keep pigs as pet but most of people keep them as a source of meat products, either directly or indirectly.
The pig is the friendliest animal on the farm by far: always available for a scratch behind the ears, hardly ever moody, and quick with a grunt of delight. Yet the pig would also eat you for supper if the circumstances were right. Pigs are the only meat-eating animals that we, in turn, raise for meat. Agriculture itself could scarcely have evolved eons ago without the versatile pig, yet fewer and fewer farmers raise even a single pig these days because there comes a time where they cannot control the situations when problems occur such as spreading of diseases to their animals.
The problem of that is not on the animals, but on the operations and maintenance of human resources like the piggeries. Pigs gets contaminated through direct or indirect contact or by eating uncooked slops or kitchen scraps or in some cases from outside animals that goes in and out from the piggeries containing the viruses or bacteria that can result to a big breakdown of the business. Viruses, bacteria, mycoplasma, and some forms of parasites are considered microbes.
When a microbe contributes to the occurrence of disease, it is referred to as a pathogen. Most microbes, however, do not adversely affect the animal. There is a normal flora of microbes literally covering every external and internal surface of the pig’s body. These normal microbes occur on the skin, in the ears, mouth, stomach, intestine, bladder, and vagina of the pig. The feces are composed primarily of microbes, approximately 100 billion microbes per gram.
The pig is exposed to far more helpful microbes than harmful pathogens when reared under reasonable levels of sanitation either extensively outdoors or in confinement buildings. Many of these helpful or good microbes produce nutrients and aid digestion of food. Whether microbes cause disease is dependent upon several determinants including the specific causal agent or agents (often microbes), host factors, and environmental factors. These determinants are variable and directly or indirectly influence the frequency and/or occurrence of disease.
Because of this variability, every effort should be made to keep out microbes that are known pathogens to pigs. To determine the health status of a herd, either blood samples for samples of body fluids for pathogen identification are frequently collected. These tests (such as serologic profiling), however, do not fully describe the health status of a pig and at times can be confusing. Serology simply suggests whether or not the pig has been exposed to a particular pathogen.
Several situations are possible regarding an infection with a pathogen such as the pig could be in the incubatory stages of disease (infection exists but clinical expression of the disease has not occurred yet); a disease or illness is occurring; the pig has recovered from the disease either on its own or due to treatment but is still infected with the pathogen (referred to as a carrier state); the carrier pig may or may not be shedding the pathogen; thus, a carrier pig may or may not be infecting other pigs; the pig may be “immune” to the effects of the disease but still be infected with the pathogen (this immune state may be induced by vaccination or simply recovery from the infection); or the pig may recover plus eliminate the pathogen.
Because of this disparity, laboratory tests should not be the sole determinant of health status. Further, health decisions should not be based on single animal evaluation, but rather on evaluation of the entire herd, or at least a representative sample of the herd. Indicators such as clinical signs, postmortem examinations, and performance data should be evaluated in addition to serology.
Thorough evaluation of all parameters assists in making decisions that can prevent outbreaks of disease. The manual examination process is complicated and takes time before the result of analyzing the test be confirmed. That’s why the proponents get the idea of proposing an automated system for detection of threats of pathogens that causes diseases to pigs. In this proposed system, the cages will be automatically scanned and then will noticed if there is a possible threat of pathogen and also it will inform the server what possible ways to prevent this but this scanner will not operate without the help of the end user for the operation of the system.
In this system, the human resources will not only rely on the hardware and software but rather it also need the organize operations and maintenance of the facilities and equipment used in the piggery and also the proper caring of the animals on its boundary. Statement Of The Problem This study aims to develop a system that will help pig owners/growers in terms of protecting and preventing the possible threat of pathogens in a faster and easier way.
The same study seeks to modernize the old autopsy system for pigs. And this study was conducted to solve the following questions: 1. How may the problems encountered by the owners/growers of the pigs in the existing system be described? 2. How may the proposed system be developed & described? 3.
How may the proposed system be assessed with the accordance of the following characteristics: a. Usability b. Speed and Accuracy c. Effectiveness d. Efficiency Objective Of The Study The objective of the researchers is to help swine owners/growers to take advantage in taking care of their business. Because, once a virus infects one of the pigs in a piggery, the virus itself will spread continuously to the rest of the populations, and because these viruses infects a large number of animals, this will results to extinction of its number, so the desperate swine raisers will or most of the time must sell this infected meats to the market which is proof of viruses or infections for a much lower price to save his profits.
This dead meats are often called “double dead meats” or “bocha” in filipino slang, and the people, as a consumers will be attracted and tempted to buy this double dead meats because of its low price but we never knew that this can harm our health. Significance Of The Study The significant of this study is to develop the way of taking care of swines. From the manual way using human resources into automated machines that can easily do all the works with the capability of minimizing the effort of human. This study will greatly benefits to the following: Farm Owner. Because of high technology system that helps the piggery in reliable and accurate detecting of possible pathogens in a cage to prevent it from spreading and business lost. Buyer/consumers.
Because the meat is in good quality the buyers will be able to buy and eat pig meats without any doubt that the meat they have bought is prone to viruses that can harm their health Future Researchers. To have references to do their future studies and also help to provide or implement this study for further use someday. Conceptual Framework The concept of the hardware and software of the pathogen scanner that the proponents devised is to automatically scan and identify the possible living viruses and bacteria causing diseases. The device will rotate to the cages and scan the animals if there is a sign or threat of pathogens. If there is a threat, the scanner will automatically analyze the suspected threat and then, inform the owner through computer.
It will give the type of disease detected and what cage is infected of that bacteria or virus that infects and how harmful it is to the pet. In this system, the owner will also be inform of giving ways on curing the pathogens or virus that has been detected. This system will also record the time the virus started infecting and propagating in the animals for further information. Output VIEW DATA SUMMARY Process ANALYZE Input SCANNING Scope And Delimitations This study is focused on monitoring pigs in their cage or stalls for possible threat of viruses and diseases. It includes the detection and analyzing of pathogens and giving available solutions that formulate ways in preventing this problem.
It also records the time the pathogens starts spreading diseases. The system requirement for this study is a computer, that serves as the main server, person who operates the server, software that uses visual basic 6 for the program to set the functions in recording and analyzing the pathogens. The scanner will be installed inside the cage with corresponding route for it to be able to rotate all over the cage. The limitation of this study is only diagnosing and giving available solutions to the problem but it cannot blocks such pathogens or viruses that has been detected, however this research focuses only in developing automated scanning of pathogens operated in a computer programs.