Time is of the essence during lambing season and any tool that enables farmers to save time while increasing productivity is essential.
This is why many farmers across the country have adopted the dedicated flock management tool by Herdwatch: Flockwatch.
Flockwatch is an app that helps sheep farmers remove farm paperwork with simple medicine recording, breeding management, lambing records, weight recording and more.
The Staunton family, who farm on the banks of Lough Mask, Co. Mayo, began using Flockwatch in 2022 and have been amazed with the impact the app has had on their farm.
Having never used a farm management app before, Thomas Staunton appreciated the hassle-free recording.
“Having the Flockwatch app on my phone that I can just jump into and update straight away while I’m doing the job. Bang it’s done there and then,” he said.
Thomas runs the farm alongside his father Tom and brother Michael. The family have a pedigree flock of blue faced Leicester’s and cross-breed lather-type ewes to produce mules, part of the Mayo mule producer group.
Tom took control of the family farm from his father back in the early 80’s and up until 11 years ago the family ran a mixed-stock farm with both cattle and sheep. Owing to the nature of the land the farm switched to sheep as the main enterprise, the flock is aptly named ‘Mask View’ as they graze the land overlooking the wonderful Lough Mask.
Breeding management
The most important aspect of harvesting the data and making better decisions for the Stauntons revolves around their breeding management.
“Flockwatch, from a breeding perspective, for us is just replacing the paperwork we had before and making the data more accessible,” he said.
“Starting off with our lambing task, we are now quickly able to record lambing, match the sires to the lamb and match the dam and record that information in seconds.”
Managing the data through the full breeding cycle enables the Stauntons to identify poor performing animals and make more informed decisions around their flock.
“We are going to be able to record all this information so at the end of the year we are going to be able to make informed decisions on what ram or ewes worked best for us, or had issues.
“The whole point of it is we are going to be able to weed out our poor performing ewes and rams, and get more lambs from the same ewes, that’s the key,” said Thomas.
Record keeping
For Irish sheep farmers, recording remedies and feed purchases through Flockwatch takes the stress out of making sure records are up to date ahead of Bord Bia audits.
Flockwatch allows you to keep records of all medicine purchases, feed purchases, animal treatments and paddock records, and create compliance reports for your audit in seconds.
Recording medicines before Flockwatch was pen and paper for the Stauntons, with the old black book coming into play, although errors were a mainstay when it came to dosing time.
“Before we would be trying to dose 50/60 sheep at a time and trying to record every tag number that got dosed was impossible,” said Thomas.
“We would always be missing a few and second guessing had we dosed this ewe etc.
“Now with Flockwatch you have your sheep in the race, you can pull up your phone input the remedy your using and scan through the flock with the EID (electronic identification) reader and it’s job done.”
Stress relief
Bord Bia inspections in times gone by was all hands to the pump in the Staunton household.
“Bord Bia inspections were always a stressful time here, scrambling for paperwork and finding out on the backs of bits of cardboard what we have used,” said Thomas.
For stress-free Bord Bia audits “we will be recording everything that comes from the vet and it will go straight into the app” he added.
“When the audit comes around we can just simply print the reports from the app and hand it to the auditor, job done, there’s no preparation the night before,” said Thomas.
Flockwatch
Flockwatch allows you to record lambing and track lamb weight gain and rearing information. You can also complete farm movements directly from the app while the animals are leaving the yard.
Some other features and benefits of being a Flockwatch member include:
- Tracking your flock performance (weights, performance, scoring, sales and purchases);
- Full flock overview in your pocket;
- Fast record entry with/without an EID reader;
- Map your farm and manage your paddocks;
- Record your sheep sales in seconds;
- Farm job management and picture records;
- Add multiple users/devices to spread the workload;
- World-class support and regular updates included;
- Saved to the cloud to keep your records safe, forever.
How can I get the app?
You can join the Stauntons and over 18,000 other farmers that use Flockwatch today.
To get started on Flockwatch, click here to download the app or visit www.flockwatch.com for more information.
