PigPal is a piggery management app built for farmers who are serious about running a better operation. Feed costs, farrowing cycles, vaccination schedules, breeding records, market prices — there’s a constant stream of information a farmer needs to hold in their head (or, more realistically, on a scrap of paper in their pocket). Most do exactly that. And most lose important data, miss critical dates, and make decisions based on memory rather than records.
PigPal started with a simple observation: pig farmers already carry smartphones, but there was no piggery management app built specifically for them. Generic livestock apps were too broad. Accounting apps were too complicated. Reminder apps had no concept of a farrowing cycle. Nobody had connected the dots.
So we built it ourselves. This is the story of how PigPal went from a frustration to a fully-featured piggery management app on the Google Play Store.
The problem every piggery management app should solve
When we started talking to pig farmers, the first thing we heard was not “I need an app.” It was: “I missed a vaccination and lost three piglets,” or “I don’t actually know which sow gave the best litters last year,” or “I think I’m profitable but I’m not sure.”
These aren’t technology problems. They’re information problems — caused by scattered records, poor visibility into the herd, and no system to close the loop between daily actions and farm-level outcomes. The technology is just the vehicle.
We designed PigPal around three core jobs a pig farmer needs to do every single day:
- Know what’s happening with every pig — health, weight, age, breeding history.
- Know what’s happening with the money — costs, income, profitability by period.
- Not miss anything important — vaccinations, dewormings, heat cycles, financial closing.
Everything in PigPal flows from those three jobs.
“A pig farmer doesn’t need a complicated system. They need one place where nothing falls through the cracks — on a phone they already have, that works whether or not there’s signal.”
Building PigPal: the key decisions
Building a farm app sounds straightforward until you sit with it. Here are the design decisions that shaped what PigPal became.
What’s inside PigPal
Tag360 — Full Pig Profiles
Every pig gets a complete profile: breed, gender, weight, exact age, vaccination and medical history, feed consumption, farrowings, prewean and postwean survival rates. One tag. Everything you need to know.
Farm Accounting
Auto-generated P&L statements, Trading Accounts, Balance Sheets, and detailed reports. Real financial visibility for your farm — without needing an accountant to interpret it.
Breeding Management
Track breeding pairs, monitor inbreeding risk with the inbreeding coefficient tool, and view family trees to make smarter pairing decisions for stronger, healthier litters.
Feed Management
Log feed inventory, track consumption per pig and per pen, and monitor feed cost against weight gain. Know exactly where your feed budget is going and whether it’s working.
Health Records
Complete health and treatment records for every animal. Log vaccinations, deworming, medications, and vet visits — and never reconstruct a health history from memory again.
Marketplace + Market Price Index
Buy and sell pigs without leaving the app. The Market Price Index keeps you informed about what pigs are fetching in the market so you always negotiate from a position of knowledge.
The hardest part wasn’t the features — it was the simplicity
Every feature in PigPal went through the same filter: can a farmer who’s never used a farm management app figure this out on day one? If the answer was no, we redesigned it.
That sounds obvious. In practice, it meant cutting features that were technically interesting but added friction. It meant defaulting every setting to the most common use case. It meant making the data entry for a vaccination record fast enough that a farmer would actually do it in the barn, right after administering the vaccine — not later, not “when I get to it.”
Because a record that doesn’t get entered doesn’t exist.
What’s next for PigPal
PigPal launched on Android and we’re continuing to improve it based on how real farmers are using it. The road map includes deeper analytics, weight gain trend analysis, and better tools for managing larger herds across multiple pens. iOS support is on the horizon.
If you have feedback, feature requests, or you just want to tell us how PigPal is working on your farm — we want to hear it. Every message we receive shapes the next version.
Try PigPal — free on Android
No subscription. No paywall on core features. Just a better way to run your pig farm — starting today.
Learn more about PigPal →Frequently asked questions
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