By Chris Aldridge

Kentucky Ag News

PRINCETON, Ky. — The regular weighing of beef cattle is vital to increased productivity and profitability. Well-informed management decisions come from easily obtained and accurate weights.

The University of Kentucky demonstrated a high-tech method of weighing a herd at its Beef and Forage Field Day at the UK Research Center near Princeton.

UK has been testing a Gallagher Auto Weigher on a herd of 10 cows. The cows weigh themselves every time they step onto the portable scale on wheels to eat a mineral supplement mixed with dried distillers’ grains.

“We started out feeding them soy hulls, but we quickly learned that the dominant cows would just come up and eat it all,” UK beef research specialist Blair Knight told the crowd of mostly beef cattle farmers. “We had one cow that had been on there 21 times and the other ones that had not been on at all.

“So, we switched to a salt block, and we really weren't getting the results that we wanted,” Knight added. “Now mixing the mineral two-thirds to one-third of distillers’, and immediately – the next day – we had seven that had good (accurate) weights, so that was kind of the trick.”

After collecting only four days of data on cows ranging from 1,302 to 1,706 pounds, the Auto Weigher was 94.9-percent accurate compared to the time-consuming activity of weighing each cow on a conventional scale.

“So far, I'm pretty impressed with it,” UK beef specialist Kevin Laurent said. “You can count on that weight being within that 5-percent range.”

Current weights are available around the clock on a smartphone app.

“In the mornings ... I just pull up Bluetooth to it, and it tells me how many cows ate all night and how many ate that morning,” Knight said. “It's super easy.”

The biggest obstacle for many small Kentucky producers is the price, about $11,000. “It's not going to fit into a lot of budgets,” he noted.

But for large producers, the time savings compared to weighing each cow could be a godsend.

“People that are running large groups of cattle, tracking weights, and timing their feeding program with their marketing program ... can track average daily gain,” Laurent said. “So, it's a pretty handy tool from that standpoint.

“I'm about to sell some stockers, and I’d love to know what all of them weigh right now,” he added. “I wonder, do I sell now, or do I wait another three or four weeks? So, if you’ve got some numbers, I think it can be practical.”