A little perspective next time you’re cursing the heavens as you sweat your way through another overheated summer day: At least you’re not a pig?
Pigs can’t sweat, leaving them particularly vulnerable to heat stress — a rough vulnerability to have in this era of record heat.
- It’s also a business vulnerability: The American swine industry loses ~$481m in annual revenue to heat stress in pigs.
Enter HotHog
A new app designed to help caregivers keep their pigs comfortable, HotHog uses localized weather data to predict animals’ internal stress levels.
As temps rise, the app prompts timely deployment of preventive cooling measures (like bonus water, fans, and misters).
There are other livestock heat-checking tools on the market, but HotHog — developed by animal scientists at Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s in-house research agency — is the first one based on data specific to a critical subset of pigs, pregnant and breeding females.
- Overheated pigs face myriad health concerns, including reproductive issues, leaving pig populations threatened by climate change.
HotHog takes a shot at this problem with its free app — though it’s only available in English right now. The HotHog team told Axios they’re adding Spanish and Chinese translations to reach other top pig-farming markets.
Why does it matter?
HotHog can immediately be a boon to the 67k pig farms in the US, which are already struggling to keep animals comfortable amid continued worker shortages.
The industry is also crucial to the US economy — it added $57B to the nation’s GDP in 2021, according to the National Pork Producers Council.
Also, pigs are cute as hell and don’t deserve anything bad… unless you’re talking about this list of badass pig names.
Stay cool, all you Smokehouses and Crushers out there.
