digital livestock scales

[wd40]

All Weigh might weigh on day one but don't expect any service.

[wd40]

back in the day of starting our purebred herd we weighed our bull and heifer calves once a month. It was a good marketting tool as far as EPD's were concerned but of little other value. I have an Elias scale and really didn't have any problems with it but don;t use it anymore. It is built into the alleyway with a bar behind it that can be closed when weighing an animal and a slant gate that goes across in front to keep the animal still.

I don't really care what my replacement heifers weigh through the winter, they are staying here for breeding. Yearling weights on bulls isn't an overly important tool when buying a bull, the same genetics can vary dependent on the feed bucket.
I tend to agree with cowman on the need for a scale in a cow/calf operation unless an individual likes working cattle.

[PureCountry]

I firmly believe in weighing my calves individually to gauge what my cows are doing. Two calves standing side by side can be very similar in structure and have 50 lbs difference when you actually run them through a scale. I weigh our cows too, so we know who's raising more of their own body weight and who isn't.

Some cows wean 50% or more, year in, year out. Some don't come close. I think it's a very valuable tool, and I love being able to use it in selection. It works for us, bottom line.

If new ones are too expensive, we'll look at farm sales for used ones.

[topper]

I think if I where looking at a new scale I would consider getting one that could be used with an rfid reader. After all we have to put the darn tags in the cattle so we might as well make use of them. I was looking at one from www.tru-test.com but have never seen one work. I think Kane Vet Supplies out of Saskatoon sells them.

[smcgrath76]

I have dealt with tru-test scale heads and rfid with progeny test cattle. They are slick. The tru-test scale head was connected to a set of reliable load cells, and an allflex stick reader. Over years we would repeatedly obtain individual weights on over 300 feeder calves in under 2 hours. and the best part was at the end you had a file with the weight, date and animal id. It saved 1/2 day of data entry and crosschecking every time.

[PureCountry]

For the bargain price of.....?

[topper]

I was kind of thinking of just buying a set of load bars for the squeeze chute and getting four or five neighbors to split the cost of the scale head and rfid reader. Surely everybody wouldn't need it on the same day, surely!!

[wd40]

True Test scales and Galleger are more than the price of a laptop.

We use a reader and scale and dump the info right into a excel spreadsheet where you want it anyhow.