Cattle weighing and growth

Average daily gain, worked out on its own

Between two weighings the platform works out the average daily gain. You do not get it out with a calculator, and it does not depend on even intervals: whether you weighed at 40 days and then at 90, the arithmetic is right in both cases.

From the values gathered, a weight curve rises across the whole growing period, with the breed reference beside it. You see at a glance whether the animal is above or below what its breed leads you to expect.

Who is falling behind, before the eye can see it

An animal that stalls looks like the others for a long while yet. On a curve, the pause shows at once. The platform raises warnings for significant deviations, for a single animal or for the whole herd at once.

The thresholds can be adjusted, and that matters more than it sounds. Set too tight, a weighing that comes out −0.1 kg after six months becomes a red alarm — and that is not illness, that is the scales. A screen full of false alarms is ignored after three days, and the real ones are ignored along with them.

Body condition score

Alongside weight, the body condition score can be recorded, on the scale the farm uses. In dairy cows it says things that kilograms alone do not, above all around calving and when drying off.

The weighing is not forgotten

After a weighing, the growth line and the gain are recalculated on the spot, and the next weighing can be placed in the calendar. For a group of young stock the date appears for the whole group, not animal by animal.