The prototype of Strongbo’s cattle scale drew attention at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show Sept. 12-14 in Woodstock.
“Gallagher will be selling these in 2024; they’ve promised them to their customers for Jan. 1,” said Marty Metzger, a veterinarian and co- founder of StrongBo Agritech. “They’ll be selling it through their dealers.”
Why it matters: The automated and portable livestock performance and health monitoring system can be used in a barn or field.
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The swine, poultry and dairy livestock sectors know precisely what their daily output is, but beef farmers traditionally don’t track daily weight gain.
“This is bringing precision agriculture into cattle growing,” said Metzger. “It could be heifer raising as well.”
With an approximate price of $15,000, Metzger said the return on investment will depend on the operation. For example, feedlots using StrongBo can monitor cattle gain for optimal shipping weight.
A salt lick entices cattle to place their front feet on the weigh scale, where an RFID scanner reads their tag and records the animal’s weight. If it’s optimal for shipping, it will spray it one colour, and the operator can program a second spray nozzle to mark animals that are underweight or over optimal weight as well, said Metzger.
The solar-powered tech uses cloud-based cell and satellite connectivity to move data without an interface, allowing for in-field use.
A British Columbia rancher with 100 head on the range used the StrongBo scale to provide accurate weights to organize enough transport vehicles.
“It’s the difference of five or seven trucks, and the difference of a truck is thousands and thousands of dollars,” said Metzger.
“That wasn’t (an application) we were expecting.”
