Strewth – it’s happened to me again! This time it was Dr Jillian Kelly from Animal Health and Nutrition (AHN) Consulting.
Jill has been a great supporter of ours since using Optiweigh units to help identify opportunities for her clients to lift their productivity – or more importantly, avoid situations where weight gains don’t meet expectations.
She invited us to be part of her recent ‘Grow It, Graze It, Bank It’ event in Coonamble (watch the full live stream here).
I was sitting in the audience and nearly fell off my chair when she managed to so succinctly sum up something I have failed to explain clearly for years, saying:
“If you haven’t got an Optiweigh, it’s going to take you six weeks to work out if your cattle haven’t put on any weight”.
So I got the calculator out:
- 6 weeks = 42 days
- If cattle gain 0.5kg per day less than expected (not uncommon), that’s 21kg per head ‘lost’
- At the current price of $4/kg equals $84 per head ‘lost’
- So for a mob of 200 head, that’s $16,800 in lost income (almost the cost of an Optiweigh unit).
Then I ran the numbers for sheep:
- Sheep gaining 50% less per day than expected (only gaining 140g/day, rather than the expected 280) = 5.9 kg per head
- At the current price of $4.50/kg live weight, that’s $26.50 per head ‘lost’
- So, only a mob of 635+ sheep is required to reach the cost of an Optiweigh unit.
If you’ve been reading our newsletters for a while, you’ll know that my rule of thumb when it comes to ag-tech purchasing is that it ‘has’ to generate numbers on the bottom line (and not just add to costs). In Jill’s real-world example, the ROI on an Optiweigh (by picking up issues early) is achieved in 6 weeks. A great reminder of why the team and I do what we do.
While I was busy with my calculator, Jill went on to talk about some of the reasons for poor weight gains. She has some great insights into feed quality and animal health in the central west, and with my producer hat on, I thought I really need to have a closer look at what is going on in our operation up on the Tablelands.
In writing this, I don’t want to seem cocky – I’m just genuinely excited about the potential for these types of precision livestock management tools to deliver real productivity gains. Our phone rings every day with questions about why weight gains don’t match expectations, and it just highlights how much opportunity there is for all of us to lift our productivity and improve our returns … with the right tools.
Our terms of trade will continue the decline that started before the 1950s. The only way we will beat this is with productivity gains and Jill found a great example of how adopters of technology and precision livestock management can get ahead of the curve.
Bill – Farmer, Founder & CEO of Optiweigh.