Weighing and Reading

Here at FenceFast we have a variety of solution to assist your need to build or evolve your perfect weighing, tag reading and data collection system for both an operational improvement and to meet traceability mandates. With FenceFast you'll get expert advice to help plan, deploy and support your livestock management solution from beginning to end.

Why weigh cattle and livestock?

Weighing replaces guesswork with facts, making it a powerful performance measurement tool for farmers. The information provided by weigh scales assists critical decision making about feed, health treatments and herd size management.
On its own, weighing is a valuable addition to your operation. However, with the emergence of EID, an opportunity exists to maximise the potential of the collected weigh data.
Weighing your stock in line with target weights replaces guess work with facts, helping you make better informed decisions around feed, treatment and selling.

What's the importance of weighing livestock?

By tracking the performance of farm animals, you can easily identify healthy breeds that perform better and cull the unproductive breeds or used them for other purposes. Monitoring animal weight facilitates early identification of diseases and averts a dangerous disease from spreading to other farm animals.
Monitoring livestock also helps in deciding an appropriate weaning time and selecting animals for cross breeding
By constantly weighing your animals to check whether they are healthy or not. The data collected after weighing them will give you a better understanding of when to increase or reduce their feed. The data can also be used to suggest any changes in the diet or recommend more nutrients

Benefits of weighing for your farming operation.

Ensure livestock are sold at the optimum weight grade– closely manage the weight gains of individual animals or herds and tailor your feed and treatment inputs as required.
Monitor reproductive performance – closely monitoring the weight gain of offspring can help make breeding decisions to maximise reproductive performance.
Minimise treatment waste– more accurately calculate drench/pour-on dosage based on the requirements of the individual animal to minimise treatment waste while also maximising the health of your livestock.
Identify sick or lame animals early – regular weighing of individual animals means weight loss and other issues that manifest over time are identified quickly.

Weight gain for profit

One of the simplest reasons you should be weighing your livestock is to make sure your animals are consistently gaining weight, so you continue to profit.

Traditionally farmers and ranchers have relied on their years of experience to know when animals are gaining weight and are ready to be sold or slaughtered.

Weighing backs up that experience with facts.

It’s all about input verses output.

The input cost of feed, staff wages, time, health treatments, pasture and equipment maintenance per day versus the weight your animals are putting on per day.

In order to profit your input costs, need to be lower than your output gains.

Regularly weighing your livestock can help you to…

Ensure animals are continually gaining weight
Review the speed which animals are gaining weight each day
Identify good performers who might require less feed
Identify poor performers which may require medical treatment

All of which will help you to determine the most profitable point to sell or slaughter your livestock.

Regular weighing will help you recognise when your input costs are in danger of becoming greater than your output gains, so you can be continuing to run a successful, profitable business.

Applying accurate treatment dose

Using accurate weights to ensure you apply the correct amount of treatments such as vaccines, parasite-control products or antibiotics can save you money and help improve the performance of your treatment.

The consequences of applying too much or too little can be costly.

Using too little means the treatment can be ineffective resulting in poor animal health. Not only has the original dose gone to waste, but you may need to administer alternative or stronger treatments to return your animal to health.

The knock-on effect of poor health can mean your animals take longer to reach their growth targets and negatively affect your feed budget.

Using too much means you’re wasting costly treatment and, in some cases, applying too much treatment can actually cause harm to an animal.

Longer term, both under and overdosing can lead to a buildup of treatment resistance in parasites which can have severe impacts on productivity.

Regular weighing will help ensure you are knowing exactly how much treatment to use for maximum effect.

Identify sick animals

It’s not always easy to detect by sight when animals are not performing as well as expected.

Regularly weighing animals will help you track weight gain performance and identify sick or lame animal early.

Weight loss is a simple way to identify individual animals that are not performing well. The animals can then be singled out and treated as recommended by your vet.

The knock-on effect of unidentified poor health can mean your animals take longer to reach their growth targets and negatively affect your feed budget or in the worst case develop into fatal illness and the loss of livestock.

What is EID?

Electronic Identification (EID) means individual animals can be tracked through their entire life cycle via their government required electronic ear tag.

Tagging animals with an electronic (EID) tag provides an opportunity to better manage the individual performance of those animals, as well easily compile a list to submit for Premise ID location transfers.

Over time, an animal’s weight history can be tracked, good and bad performers can be identified, and the input of resources managed to ensure profits are maximised.

Benefits of using EID

The rise in the use of Electronic Identification (EID) or RFID tags in livestock can be credited to increasing numbers of export dependant countries introducing mandatory traceability schemes for the purposes of disease control.

The increase in smarter, precision farming practices has also driven the acceptance of this technology.

EID tags enable you to accurately, quickly and automatically identify an individual animal, eliminating the need to enter tag numbers manually.

EID also makes it practical to record individual animal performance and other information – such as source, breeding or treatment information.

Using EID with an electronic weigh scale indicator means you can view animal’s full performance history instantly while you’re weighing in the field, which helps you make important management decisions quickly.

Over time, an animal’s weight history can be tracked, good and bad performers can be identified, and the input of resources managed to ensure profits are maximised.

How does EID work with your weigh system?

With an EID compatible Weigh scale Data collector, EID panel or stick reader, animals can be scanned at the time of weighing.

Individual animal weights and other traits can be recorded against each animal’s unique ID number. Information is stored within the weigh scale Data collector ready for you to view in the yard or back at the office, transferred to your computer, electronic device, or upload to online databases.