As all cattle farmers would know, monitoring the weights of livestock is key to improving profits and reducing costs. But as Armidale beef producer Bill Mitchell has experienced, it can be quite the arduous task.
“My wife and I run a grass-fed backgrounding and fattening operation, which means everything revolves around monitoring the weight of our cattle,” he says.
“However, unless you have an in-paddock weighing system, the only way to do that is to muster the whole lot, walk them to the yards and weigh them one by one. When you’re dealing with lots of cattle, this is obviously not efficient.”
With an alternative sorely needed, Bill decided to take things into his own hands.
“I wanted to create a fully automated, in-paddock weighing system that could reliably capture front foot weights of a single animal and provide regular data,” he says.
“I came up with some prototypes that I used on my property, and by 2019, the system I had created was ready to be launched commercially.”
Soon enough, with the help of the UNE SMART Region Incubator (SRI), Optiweigh was born.
“How it works is you put the Optiweigh into your desired paddock, and cattle are enticed onto it with an attractant, such as molasses, a lick block or salt,” says Bill.
“Stepping on, they have their electronic identification recorded and front feet weighed. This information is sent to the cloud and an algorithm is applied to calculate total body weight. Liveweight information is updated multiple times daily and sent to any device type including phone, laptop, or tablet.”
Image: The Optiweigh in action.
Since launching, hundreds of units have been sold locally and overseas, with farmers around the globe wanting to experience the game-changing benefits for themselves- and it’s no surprise why.
“On top of the obvious improvements, like taking away the need to muster and the ability to regularly and accurately monitor weights, the Optiweigh gives farmers so much more information into the drivers of weight gain, when the cattle are putting on weight, and what pasture species are giving better weight gain," says Bill.
This is something that’s come in particularly handy in the world of academia, with the UNE SMART Farms recently adopting the innovation at its properties.
“We decided to start using the Optiweigh because we have increased the number of cattle that we run across the Armidale SMART Farms and were keen to get more information on how they are performing in the paddock,” says UNE SMART Farms Research and Engagement Manager, Dr Rachelle Hergenhan.
“We also have a collaborative project with DLF Seeds to improve some areas of our pastures using their high-performance pasture seed. As part of this we are gathering animal performance data and monitoring cattle liveweights in the paddock is a great way to capture this data.”
Dr Hergenhan says keeping up with the latest technological innovations is at the core of the UNE SMART Farms, and using new tech like Optiweigh has flow on benefits to the university's research and teaching.
“As we are rotationally grazing the high-performance pastures, it means we can get more useable information on liveweight gains that can be attributed to the cells and paddocks the animals are grazing without needing to account for handling or curfews," she says.
“This means there are more options for our researchers to collect data for their projects, and it allows us to collect data in our commercial enterprises that we can use to inform our decision making.”
This is something Bill is passionate about, with this desire to contribute to the region’s educational and economic growth one of the reasons he decided to found his business through the SRI.
“I wanted to be a part of helping evolve that ecosystem because I think there’s an amazing array of businesses involved in that in the local community, and there’s a lot of benefits to having these businesses located here, from an educational, agricultural and economical perspective,” says Bill.
“It’s been very important to me to keep it local, support local manufacturing in our businesses, create local jobs and be part of that growing ecosystem in the area.”
You can read more about how the UNE SMART Farms are embracing new innovations here.
