How do you know when cattle need more grass, or when you’re leaving money behind in the paddock? At Many Peaks, WA producer Kent Rochester combines Optiweigh with virtual fencing to fine-tune grazing decisions in real time, balancing pasture utilisation, regrowth and weight gain to drive productivity across 3,000 cattle annually.
- K & M ROCHESTER
- ALBANY (WA)
- OPTIWEIGH CATTLE X 2
BACKGROUND
At ‘Many Peaks’ on the south coast of Western Australia, Kent Rochester, his wife Michelle, and their two kids, run a 1,200-hectare cattle operation.
With about a thousand hectares of available grazing, the business model is focussed on grass-finishing around 3,000 head of cattle a year (predominantly for Coles), sending a load each week. Given the intensity of the production system, there isn’t much room for guesswork.
For many years, Kent managed the pastures using standard rotational grazing, pulling cattle into the yards once a month to weigh them.
It was a slow process. If the numbers came back low, he’d find himself looking for excuses before sending the mob right back out to the paddock without any real answers.
ADOPTING TECHNOLOGY – PHASE 1 GAINS
That began to change in late 2019 when Kent put an Optiweigh in the paddock.
By watching live weight data, Kent could spot within days where weight gains were not matching his expectations of the available pasture – something he previously wouldn’t have identified until a monthly yard weigh. It uncovered the hidden variables that he couldn’t spot from the seat of the ute.
In those early days, Kent had a mob on a rotation that he assumed was gaining a solid two kilos a day. To the human eye, everything looked perfect, and he figured he had a whole month of great feed ahead of them.
The data from the Optiweigh revealed that the animals’ weight gains were dropping off rapidly, much earlier than expected. The true grazing window of the grass was much shorter than he realised.
“I’d recommend Optiweigh to anyone who wants to understand more about what their cattle or sheep are doing out on grass.”
“It has easily helped us become better at farming,” Kent said.
“Knowing those bookings are out ahead of us, and tracking the cattle closely, means we know when we need to put the foot on the accelerator to push them, and when we’ve already got the weight in the paddock, so we can just cruise until the sale date.”
“That’s pretty important for maximising what we’re loading onto the truck.”
At this time of year (early Autumn) Kent uses his Optiweighs to monitor supplementary feed rations, adjusting as he goes to get the animal performance to where it needs to be.
Then as he moves into seasonal changes, he looks at how the pasture is performing, and what the animals need to meet market requirements.
“It helps us allocate the right amount of grass to get the right result,” he said.
“Transitioning out of spring and back into summer, it’s been really interesting to learn how the grass, even when it still looks really good, can start to become deficient for what we’re trying to drive.”
“With Optiweigh, you can make decisions to get those weight gains back where you want them much earlier than if we were just weighing in the yards”
Typically, Kent leaves the Optiweighs with each mob for 7 days, before it moves to the next.
ADOPTING TECHNOLOGY – PHASE 2 GAINS
The next level of productivity gains arrived by pairing Optiweigh’s in-paddock weight data with virtual fencing.
Virtual fencing now means Kent shifts his stock up to 10 times a day, based on what the data is telling him. He can allocate a mob a tiny fraction of a hectare at a time without ever stringing a physical wire.
But running a high-intensity virtual grazing system created a brand-new learning curve.
“The ultimate challenge lies in balancing a delicate paddock triangle: looking after the pasture; leaving enough grass residual behind to ensure healthy regrowth; and keeping the cattle moving forward”, he said.
“Leaving the cattle in a virtually fenced zone for just a fraction too long wastes animal performance. Moving them a few hours too soon leaves valuable grass behind.”
“To work out the exact area to allocate for the best daily performance, we need an Optiweigh. There’s no way we could accurately see those changes with our eyes. I wouldn’t go virtual fencing without an Optiweigh … not with what we are doing in our grass finishing job. Weight gain and animal performance is how we get paid, we have to hit targets to make a dollar.”
LESSONS DRIVEN BY DATA
This is where the direct link between the two technologies becomes essential. For Kent, virtual fencing cannot work as effectively without the live data from the Optiweigh units.
“Without something monitoring actual performance, my eyes aren’t good enough to tell me what they’re doing all the time.”
TAKEAWAYS
Real-time, in-paddock, weight data gives producers immediate feedback on how stock are responding to grazing rotations. It means you can fine tune the balance between pasture utilisation, pasture health, and liveweight performance.
Optiweigh removes the guesswork, showing exactly what is happening in the paddock, driving more accurate decisions, and minimising potential setbacks.
Virtual fencing delivers massive productivity gains, but using Optiweigh alongside it helps reduce the risk of overutilising pasture.
Together, the technologies allow producers to confidently push grazing systems harder. Be it in grass finishing systems like Kent’s, or in any system where Virtual Fencing is being deployed, this combination of tools creates a practical pathway to achieving sustained productivity improvements year after year.