Our musings from last time have prompted a bit of reaction and we’ve also been running a survey on shrinkage. So this week I’m going to continue the theme and extend the survey in the hope that we can uncover more insights that are going to benefit everyone.

Shrink percentages are important because they impact us both financially and emotionally. Financially, if we do things that lead to bad results the cost can be very significant (1% of a truck load of feeder steers now is worth nearly $1,800). Emotionally, it nags at us because the variability of loss percentages always makes us want to understand more about how to repeat the better outcomes.

Weighing in the paddock brings another dimension to this – because now we have another source of ‘loss’. One prominent feedlot company recently told us they don’t like people having Optiweigh units because they lead to unrealistic expectations around shrink and delivered weights. And while we have always tried hard to explain sources of variability between paddock weights and yard weights there is obviously more we need to do.

One thing we do now know is that the in-paddock weights are as reliable and repeatable as we can get. We know this because we’ve done thousands of weight comparisons and Universities have published papers confirming accuracy. We also know it because the units can pick up a small percentage change in mob average weight due to a change in anything like weather, nutrition, water or animal health.

Side note – just to show how much cattle weights vary Richard Dalglish (our very first Optiweigh customer – thank you Richard) sent us some weights collected from a dairy cow in a robot milking machine over three days.

They were: 654, 651, 625, 640, 685 and 669.

The power of in-paddock weighing lies in the fact that we are collecting multiple records per animal and from multiple animals – thus giving a very accurate weight measure. This was confirmed by the paper published by Hasan et al:

So instead of worrying about the shrink between the Optiweigh and the yards we need to start thinking about shrink between Optiweigh and a curfewed weight.

Our survey so far tells us that the average shrink between yards and feedlot is 5.5% - but with a range from 2% to 9%. We would love to get more feedback on this – and also understand how many people are looking at the shrink between Optiweigh and feedlot, or indeed Optiweigh and slaughter weights.

Reminder: The weight generated by Optiweigh is tailored to replicate a “Full’ yard weight. That is, the weight you would get if the animals were:

So if you do the numbers on shrink (and we know everyone does!) please complete our survey below. Once we get more results we will be publishing them on our new Community discussion page where Optiweigh users will also be able to log in and add comments.

Survey:

Through this process we hope to uncover insights that can benefit everyone. Notwithstanding my previous comments recently about clichés – this is definitely something that cattle producers need to be able to measure so that it can be better managed.

Just how much there is still to learn was highlighted by another conversation I had with Harry Perrett this week: Harry had another case of Optiweigh weights being quite a bit heavier than yard weights. His hypothesis (which we would totally agree with from what we have seen from time to time) is that it has something to do with the season – the feed is dry and frosted and the cattle aren’t putting on weight.

If you would like us to help run your numbers on shrink please don’t hesitate to reach out. Safina is a whiz and has systems set up to generate an analysis and spit out a report for you in no time. To find out more contact me or get in touch direct with Saf during office hours on 1300 678493 or safina@optiweigh.com.au.