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Weighing and EID equipment

Weighing and EID equipment

Weighing and EID equipment (electronic Identification) can streamline the process of recording animal data for farm records, eliminating the need for a clipboard.
Traditionally you would weigh an animal, recording it’s weight against an ear tag number. 

Why use electronic weighing and EID equipment

With an old needle type weighing unit you would usually have to guess the reading as the animal jumped about in side the crush possibly leading to inaccurate information.

Once all of the animals are finished weighing, you then need to enter this information into a farm management system e.g. Farm plan, this takes time.

With a digital weighing system the animals weight is locked within seconds even when jumping about in side the crush with at least 1% margin for error.

If used with an EID tag reader this information can be  recorded and stored on an SD card located inside the EID tag reader.

Not only will the EID tag reader store the animals weight, it will also record other information such as medication, lameness, age and also link mothers with off spring (mothering). This information can be transferred to a computer system either via Bluetooth or by removing the SD card from the EID tag reader.

With a medical record the unit will display whether or not the animal is in a withdrawal period and/or any other notes which were recorded the last time they were scanned.

weighing and EID equipment

How will electronic weighing and EID equipment save me time and money ?

Using the following example you can get an idea of how EID equipment can  benefit you (it is just an example, not based on a real scenario).

Using traditional methods, one member of staff @ £10.00 per hour takes three hours to record 100 head of cattle onto a note pad/clipboard and then another three hours to enter the data collected into a computer system = £60.00 per day. if this is done once a week for six months then this is £60.00 x 4 =£240.00 x 6 =£1440.00 plus 2 or 3 other members of staff who help put the cattle through the crush.

With an EID tag reader with data recording capabilities (Gallagher HR5 £1,599.00 inc vat), the relevant information is recorded at the time of weighing so will take less than an an hour to transfer the data from the reader or the SD card onto a computer. 

If you have already stored an animal onto the EID tag reader then this will take even less time to process.

weighing and EID equipment from Gallagher

Other benefits of EID equipment.

Can record daily weight gains

Lameness record

Information can be downloaded as excel document.

Can be used to notify animal movements with BCMS.

Portable units can be moved around farms easily.

Long reach without reaching into crush or race.