A group of beef farmers from Northern Ireland recently paid a visit to a beef farm in Co. Cavan to see the latest cattle weighing system technology in action.

The Irish-built technology has been developed by Boyle, Co. Roscommon man Kieran Supple and was first unveiled at Ploughing2024.

The technology was recently showcased on the Wilton Beef Farm in Kiffagh, Co. Cavan and Agriland was in attendance on the day to see the smart weighing system in action.

Essentially, the weighing system, which has a 6L water drinker, can record the weight of an animal every time it takes a drink.

According to the developer, the system can record weight with 98% accuracy from the front two legs of the animal standing on the scales regardless of the confirmation or grade of the animal.

The weighing system can be installed in existing cattle pens or with cattle out at grass.

One of the challenges in cattle weight recording data is that information collected using conventional weighing scales takes a single snapshot of an animal's weight, but does not account for gut-fill or gut empty.

Speaking to Agriland, Supple said: "On a 500kg animal, there can be 30kg in weight variation in gut-fill and gut-empty."

He explained the role of the technology in an on-farm scenario.

"If you look at any pen of animals, generally, 20% will over-perform, 20% will underperform and 60% will perform as expected.

"When you look individually at each animal, you can identify each bracket and do something in time," he said.

Farmers can enter their animal purchase price, animal purchase weight, estimated factory price and the system will give farmers reports on daily profitability and feed costs.

These can be compared to identify when beef animal performance falls near the profitability line and the animal can be moved on.

Farmer experience

The host farmer Rodney Wilton gave an overview of his experience using the system.

Also in attendance on the day were John Hourigan from Ridgeway Wagyu and midlands-based beef farmer Paul McInerney, both of whom have the systems in place on their respective farms.

Wilton explained the reason he chose this system for the performance monitoring of his cattle.

He explained that he installed the unit to monitor one pen of cattle in the shed and uses the data recorded from this "as an overall representative snapshot of the performance of the cattle in the yard".

He said: "All you really want to do is get it on a weekly spread what did the cattle gain that week versus what were they fed.

Wilton said that when a dairy farmer is feeding a diet and introduces lower nutritional value silage, "it will be seen in reduced volumes in the bulk tank a day or two after".

He explained that when monitoring the performance of beef cattle, it can often take a week or two to notice if performance has slowed.

However, this system gives the farmer a live snapshot of daily performance of the cattle.

Wilton said that he looks at the weekly spread of the performance of the cattle and uses this information to identify if a tweak needs to be made to the diet.

He said: "Last week, we changed diet and compared the impact on performance from Monday to Monday.

"The cost was up slightly but the average daily liveweight gain was up slightly too."

He emphasised the value of instant accurate information on performance when ensuring cattle are on the most efficient finishing diet.

He added: "If there's a problem, you see it straight away on this."

According to Supple, there is more interest in closer monitoring of cattle weight performance.

He explained: "Farmers are now getting more clued into it and want to see what animals are making a profit and what isn't."