Ask a good cattleman to tell you how much that calf in the pasture weighs and he’d be able to give you a pretty accurate eyeball guess. While that cowboy knowledge is truly a special gift and has suited the cattle production industry for generations, today’s demand for efficiency has created a need for a more accurate assessment.

Understanding how much your calves weigh at any point in their development fuels management and marketing decisions. Then it stands to reason that the decisions made with this knowledge can have a significant impact on your business. For this reason, any weight data that you collect needs to be as accurate as possible.

Daily Weights are Most Accurate

Nothing is more accurate than routinely weighing cattle. The problem is, in the beef industry it’s not exactly easy to handle cattle every day and bring them to a scale in order to collect weights. Thanks to the Tru-Test WOW Flexi Mobile system, you can bring the scale to your cattle.

This system is a self-contained, portable unit that can be transported by truck, tractor or ATV to any location within a field or pasture. Ideally, the unit would be placed in a corralled area where cattle would visit on a daily basis such as a water source, mineral feeder, lick tub or some other feed source. When the scale is placed at the entrance to the corral, cattle are required to walk over the unit to access the water or feed. Cattle may be timid to cross the scale at first. A quick three-step process to train cattle only takes a short period of time before cattle are accustomed to walking over the scale.

Cell or Satellite

Real-time weights are collected on the animal as it walks over the scale. Weights are paired with animals according to their electronic ear tag and data is sent to the cloud. There are three different modes that can be used to send the data to the cloud. Wi-Fi can be used to collect data if the scale is located in range, and cell or satellite packages are available for scales located in remote areas. The unit is powered by a battery charged each day with a small solar panel.

Once the data reaches the cloud, it can be accessed at any time by any computer or a mobile device that carries the Datamars Livestock DataLink app. The data can be used to make more informed management decisions, such as:

• Manage forage production. Because you’re taking weights daily, you can see when growth rates plateau or start to decline. This can help you know when it’s time to move calves to new pastures with better forages.
• Better target weight predictions. With the daily weights, it’s easier to know when calves are projected to hit your target market weight. You don’t have to go out and collect a group of cattle, push 10 or so across a scale to get an average weight of the group, then make your decision based on eyeballing the entire pen. With accurate daily weights on each animal, you have a much better idea of when specific cattle are going to hit your target weight.
• Create marketing efficiencies. With daily weights on each animal, you can more accurately group calves into uniform loads for better consistency for the buyer. This makes the scale especially useful for larger herds that can put together large enough groups to take advantage of marketing efficiencies.
• Identify breeding weights. The system can also be used with replacement heifers. If you have a target breeding weight in mind, you can track weight gain over time and know when heifers are going to be ready to breed. If weight gains are starting to slow down, you can make forage adjustments to keep heifers on the right growth path.
• Health management. You can identify individual calves that may not be growing as fast as their herdmates and make the necessary health interventions.

The Tru-Test Flexi Mobile 4000C system works within any segment of the beef production cycle. If you’re in a situation as a cow-calf producer, backgrounder or stocker where you’re selling several loads of cattle each year, the investment in the system will pay for itself faster than if you’re just marketing a load or two each year. More accurate weights, better marketing opportunities along with better forage management will all bring dividends to using the system.

The system is also durable enough to work in a feedlot setting. We’ve seen the same system work in large, 3,000-cow dairies where 1,600-pound cows are walking across the system three times each day, and the system holds up just fine.

Regardless of the system, a Tru-Test Flexi Mobile 4000c scale makes the system smarter. Animal performance can be checked on a daily basis with no special cattle handling, reducing the stress on the animal while improving the accuracy of the data. And decisions on forage management or ration adjustments can be made to make performance even better.

Do you want to check how smart your pastures are? Or identify how you can make them even smarter? Just click this link https://form.jotform.com/230874053856159.

Written by Jason Jones, National Account Manager, Datamars Livestock