Consultancy & innovation
As a veterinarian and pig behaviour specialist, Kees provides a number of advisory products for pig farmers, managers, veterinarians and farm advisors.
For more information, don't hesitate to contact us.
Pig Signals®
Pig Signals® is about first looking, then thinking, and last but not least, doing. Taking these steps separately solves problems and prevents to become ‘blinded by routine’. The Pig Signals® series contains four best-selling 'signals books'; Pig Signals, Sows, Finishing Pigs and Piglets.
Kees gives lectures on this theme and even more on-farm training sessions. These intensive training sessions teach the participants to really look. Learning to observe uninhibitedly often leads to nice surprises! The observations are noted and analysed (thinking), which lead to a number of specific action points (doing).
Pig Signals® has also become a household name outside of the Netherlands. Training sessions are provided in Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and France. Click here for more information and a link to the books.
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Fides Farmily
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The Agricultural Innocation Campus brought five of the most innovative farms in Brabant together: Kees Scheepens, Miriam and Marcel Berkvens, Martijn van Overveld, Henri van den Boomen, and Carla and Gerrit Verhoeven. The farmers are of different ages and work in different sectors, but they all want change, and they want to support each other in realizing this change. These five businesses hold regular meetings and are assisted by a business economics consultant, a process supervisor, social designer Tabo Goudswaard, and the recently graduated Fides Lapidaire. The group has named itself the Fides Farmily, fides being the Latin word for trust. Anne-Marie Spierings, Agricultural Representative of the Province of Noord- Brabant, is 'godmother'.
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Fides Farmily helped Kees in his succesfull subsidy application for the FOOD2020 program, to further the research and development of the Pig Toilet. The collaboration has also led to the introduction of a 'bitterbal', a Dutch fried snack, made of organic billy-goat: Verhoevens Natuurbock. A third example is the 'Pâté-Café' where Marcel and Miriam Berkvens serve their delicious pâté and tell their own story, instead of anonymously delivering sows to the slaughther plant.
