Beef producers face countless obstacles in raising high-quality, nutritious products. Deficiencies, avoidances and half-hearted energies directed toward any management area will result in mediocre performance, reduced profitability at a minimum and financial disaster in the worst cases.
Tasks like heat detection for artificial insemination and early disease identification demand the attention of experienced, dedicated and knowledgeable workers. North American cattle production operations continue to experience significant labour shortages with trained and willing personnel becoming harder to identify and retain. Additional vehicle and fuel expenses combine with repetitive herd gathering and handling to increase inputs and build stress levels.
Due to proactive thinking, healthy animals are occasionally misidentified as sick, needlessly pulled from their pens and unnecessarily processed through a barn’s treatment protocols. Immune systems are challenged and feeding schedules are disrupted, squandering daily gains and intake efficiency.
Here, we’ll take a look at some emerging technologies and what they can provide forward-thinking producers.
Animal health tracking
Technology companies are helping bridge the gap between what is humanly and technologically possible in cattle management. For example, HerdDogg’s minimal intervention platform uses eartag sensors to read and record movement, identifying minute temperature and travel changes even the most experienced handlers miss. Additionally, these early warnings alert of health status and estrus timelines.
“For cow-calf operations, machine learning algorithms identify changes in heat cycles by comparing readings of all mature animals,” says HerdDogg CEO Andrew Uden. “We’re not applying external outliers from one region to another, which adds accuracy.”
Bluetooth-capable systems collect data from feedlots and pastures, transferring information into the cloud for any smartphone, tablet or computer to access.
Algorithms crunch data into individual status health alerts, and bright green LED eartag lights are activated in a feedlot pen or pasture-based breeding group to identify early signs of sickness or estrus. These animals can be confidently pulled for treatment or moved for artificial insemination.
Early disease detection allows for less expensive drugs to counteract illness. Sickness discovered in stages later than desired automatically triggers more costly antimicrobials to head off mortalities. Antibiotics are routinely wasted and incorrectly used due to misaligned timelines, adding to antimicrobial resistance worries.
“Operations greatly reduce time spent and labour required for checking health when using technologies like ours,” Uden says. “Plus, newer, less experienced staff become confident, pinpointing the earliest stages of sickness, allowing less expensive drugs to be used, resulting in a much higher treatment success rate.”
Uden believes technologies pave the way for improving reproductive and breeding processes, reducing time and labour inputs, saving fuel and limiting equipment demands. They also cut drug and treatment costs and help remove costly guesswork from decision-making. Expanding databases reinforce management, strengthen health, lower morbidity, reduce mortality and even curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“All this is accomplished while still adding to profitability,” Uden says. “We limit intervention, reduce antibiotics and do our part to counteract antimicrobial resistance. The young people entering the industry must be equipped with tools to help them do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, and they should be excited to enter a field with so much innovation.”
Courtesy photo.
Traceability solutions
Software technology exists that is designed to maximize efficiency and profitability using fully integrated, scalable systems. One company that provides this technology is ITS (Integrated Traceability Solutions) Livestock, an Okotoks, Alberta-based innovative software agribusiness. ITS’s offerings manage commodities and inventory, individual and group health, contracts, financials, invoicing and in-truck feeding for feedyards. The company also supplies RFID equipment, scales, computer and network hardware, and IT services.
“Our software allows producers to record everything they do,” says Drew Mason, owner and managing operations partner at ITS Livestock. “We computerize, digitize and automate customer pain points including incoming cattle and financial groups, tracking them through the process rather than using strictly visual tags and manually recording data.”
New animals are scanned chuteside and entered into the software. Veterinary protocols can be integrated with automatic dosing syringes to deliver accurate amounts. The software is “hardware agnostic” and integrates with any chute-mounted, Bluetooth or handheld readers.
The ITS solution also simplifies the financial side of the ledger, recording all details of inbound animals and groups while calculating profitability.
“We record all source information of where they came from, helping producers understand whether they’ve been profitable or not, and help with future purchasing decisions,” Mason says. “This type of information helps reinforce what they’re good at when it comes to managing cattle.”
The technology farmers require depends on the gap they’re trying to fill. Separate ITS modules are optional and can be activated when desired. Others might be integrated from different packages. At a minimum, a simple Windows computer could be a farm’s server and data entry point. Some clients carry a single tablet, especially in smaller operations as they’re usually hands-on with all areas.
Mason believes ITS and similar tech companies offer excellent ROI as many clients are unsure where their lot profitability stands.
“We’ve had customers on loading and feeding alone accurately reach an ROI of weeks to months,” he says. “It depends on what they’ve been doing and how well they’ve been doing it. Even fine-tuning well-run operations will pay within months.”
Mason says advancing North American cattle industry technology will produce positive results on the financial side while providing labour savings and greater accuracy. It will also demonstrate that producers are acting responsibly.
“Technology will impact future generations, as in the past, a lack of tech has discouraged people from entering the industry and kept children from following in their parents’ footsteps,” Mason says. “Technology’s excitement brings people into the industry and gives value, purpose and something to strive for.”
