What is the best way to weigh livestock?
Weighing livestock is an integral part of modern farming, with cattle, sheep, pigs and numerous other animals requiring routine weighing, as part of best practice farming.
Not only does this allow you to regularly monitor their weight (and so, ensure they are maintaining good health), but it also helps you to keep your farm as productive and profitable as possible.
In this article, we’ll cover the importance of accurate livestock weighing, and our recommendations for the most effective way to weigh animals.
Why is livestock weighing important?
Accurate livestock weighing unlocks numerous critical benefits for a farm.
What makes this step so important is that it allows you to:
Monitor your animal’s health – By routinely tracking the weight of your livestock, you can quickly and accurately track its growth and manage their diets. It is also a great way to identify illnesses as early as possible, as well as any underlying health issues.
Improve the efficiency of your feeding programmes – By having better insights into the weight of your animals and how it fluctuates, you can ensure that your animals receive exactly the right amount of nutrition that they require (while overfeeding is a waste of resources and money, underfeeding is obviously not something that a farm wants to risk).
Correctly medicate your animals – The dosage for most veterinary treatments (including wormers and antibiotics, for example) is based on the animal’s weight. So, by more accurately weighing the animals, you can be as precise as possible in your dosing, thereby making the treatment as effective as possible.
Informing your market decisions – By knowing the exact weight of your animals, you are in a more informed position to make key decisions. This includes breeding your animals and selling them, thereby improving the profitability and performance of your farm.
These benefits quickly translate into significant improvements across a farm’s operations, including key areas such as:
- Growth rates
- Operational efficiency
- Time savings
- Feed conversion
- Maintenance costs (e.g. medication)
- Animal health
- Animal sales
- Breeding decisions
- Overall profitability
Best practice livestock weighing
The most effective and accurate way to weigh livestock is using dedicated livestock weighing scales.
You need to ensure that you are using the correct weighing scales for your specific use case, and these types of weighing scales have been specifically engineered to handle farm animals safely and efficiently (including their size and weight, as well as their movements).
The most common types of livestock scales are:
- Crate scales – The livestock enters a crate, which contains the weighing platform.
- Weigh platforms – Larger open platforms, which weigh the animals as they pass over it.
- Portable scales – Designed to weigh animals across a farm, in different locations as required.
Why choose Parker Farm livestock scales?
At Parker Farm, we are one of the UK’s leading suppliers of bespoke farm weighing scales.
We work with farms across the country, to supply high performance scales that are precisely tailored to suit the unique needs of each farm.
These best in class solutions are designed to be flexible – seamlessly integrating into your existing processes – while still offering the highest standards of durability and precision.
What’s more, these tailored technologies can be precisely adapted, to support specific use cases and a wide range of requirements. As such, by investing in bespoke livestock weighing scales, you can ensure the most valuable outcomes for your operations.
So, to find out more about the products that Parker Farm offers, or to work with our team to identify the best livestock weighing solution for your farm, get in touch with our team.