Lifestyle farmers Maree and Jason Furniss say they can confidently make decisions on when to keep stock or sell it on because they’ve started using Tru-Test’s S3 Weigh Scale Indicator system with MP600 loadbars, and they expect improved returns from using the technology.
The Northland lifestylers rear a herd of 35 Angus-Friesian cross calves from five days old, selling some for processing during the year and taking the remainder through to 18 months before their second winter.
The couple are trialing the S3 weigh scales, designed for smaller farms and lifestyle properties, and say they wouldn’t be without them in future because it’s giving them support in smart decision-making.
They’re also using the Tru-Test SRS2 stick reader, MP600 loadbars and 2.2m cattle platform, and load all their weighing information into the Datamars Livestock cloud software via the free Tru-Test Datalink App.
Maree says instead of using visual assessments to select stock for holding or moving on, they can now drill down into the performance of each individual calf.
“We get our calves in batches and so we have different ages across the herd. We can now monitor each one from each group and see how their Average Daily Gain (ADG) is going and how they are tracking”.
“From this you can make decisions to hold back some and keep them longer to gain more weight”.
Maree says having never used smart technology for capturing livestock data before, it took a bit of learning in the beginning, but now they love having all the information at their fingertips with the smart software.
The stick reader scans the calf’s Z Tags Electronic Identification (EID) number, giving a pre-entered Visual Identification (VID) from the Z Tags management tag, and the farmer enters this VID into the phone. The phone is connected, through Bluetooth, to the S3 scales via the Datalink app.
From there the calf’s weight and associated identification is uploaded to the Datamars Livestock cloud software. “By the time you get back to the house for a cup of tea all the information is in the cloud and you can call it up on your PC, tablet or smartphone” she says.
“It can work out if your calves are going backwards or if you’re not getting the expected growth rate. You can click on it and find out which cattle need changes to their feed or more attention, and predict the weight they’re going to be in the future.”
Maree says it’s bringing certainty to their operation they never had before, where decisions to offload stock were based on weather and feed conditions rather than on market conditions. “It has opened up opportunities. We can make decisions that we would not have been thinking about making before. When you’re coming into a grass market and you’re watching the schedule, you can definitely make decisions with confidence.”
Jason says they expect to see an improvement in their bottom line with the new technology. “Now we can actually go through and see this is where we want cattle to be in terms of weight, so we can go for the better return for that animal.”
Another benefit is being able to identify and bolster struggling calves. ‘We can target specific animals. “Just this week we’ve started putting more supplements into some of them – we would definitely not have known that before by purely looking at them.”
“If you can address these issues in the early days they will have good health right through spring and it will affect what you are going to get at the end,” he says. The 2.2m long cattle platform and loadbars are very accurate, stable and with rubber base are quiet so the stock are happy to go on them, he says. “They are brilliant and you can weigh quite a few cattle in a short time.”
They say the Tru-Test S3 indicator is so easy to use through their smartphone that the kids are keen to help out, and they can do so safely without getting involved in stock handling. “The kids are really tech savvy and they are quite keen to rug up and come out and have a go when we are weighing. They sit down there with the phone and enter the data in.”
Maree and Jason definitely want to keep using the S3 weigh scale once their trial ends and encourage other lifestyle and small run holders to give it a go. In the future they are looking forward to comparing their current herd with their future herds and the results they can achieve.