Cattle weights recorded in the paddock by Optiweigh's automatic scales will now go straight into the Breedr cattle management app, after the two companies linked their systems.
Farmers running an Optiweigh unit no longer need to download weight data and type it in by hand. Once a farmer has linked their Optiweigh account to Breedr, each weight is matched to the right animal by its electronic ear tag and added to its record, at intervals the farmer chooses. The feature is available now to Breedr users.
Optiweigh was started by Bill and Jacqui Mitchell, who farm near Armidale in New South Wales, and launched in 2019. Its solar-powered units sit out in the paddock and use a lick block to draw cattle on to a platform, where each animal's tag is read and its weight recorded without the need to muster. The company has now delivered over 2,000 units, which are being used for the management of over 500,000 animals every day. Units are in use in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America and the UK.
Breedr was founded by an Australian farmer's son, Ian Wheal, and is now headquartered in Texas. Its app tracks each animal's weight, health and breeding from birth to sale, and more than two million cattle are recorded on it across the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Last month the company raised $27 million in a funding round led by Partech.
Weight gain is one of the clearest signs of how cattle are performing and when they will be ready to sell. The more often the animals can be weighed the more chances are created to improve outcomes - but weighing them is a time consuming and labour intensive process. Optiweigh fills that gap, but the figures have tended to sit apart from the rest of a herd's records. Now a farmer can see daily weight gain alongside health and breeding records, and use it to decide on feeding, grazing and when to sell.
Ian Wheal, Founder and CEO Breedr, said: "Most cattle are still managed on paper, and even where farmers have invested in good kit, the numbers often end up in a spreadsheet nobody has time to open. Optiweigh does something clever out in the paddock, and putting those weights next to everything else a farmer knows about an animal is where they start to pay. The data belongs to the farmer, and our job is to make it work for them, not give them more to do."
Bill Mitchell, Founder and Chief Executive of Optiweigh, said: "Weighing cattle without mustering them changes what a producer knows about their herd from one week to the next. But a weight on its own only tells you so much. Seeing it against the rest of an animal's history is what turns it into a decision. Linking with Breedr means the numbers go where they are needed automatically, so producers can spend their time acting on them rather than typing them in."