From day one we built the Cattler app in such a way that every animal is an individual regardless of having or not a 'name' (or a number), so that when we were to add individual management capabilities, the system would be there to respond.
And that architecture worked pretty well! Now that we have a solid feeding system ongoing
-even if we improve it all the time- this is the moment where everything begins to take color for people using individual identification. We are integrating different features where plastic eartags or electronic IDs (EIDs) need to be read, all across the app: from being able to transfer or sort specific individuals to a different pen, to treating cattle anywhere and pulling their records on the fly, all the way to processing a lot one by one at the chute barn.
What do we use for ID? Basically, any system that is out there, from Visual Tags if the farmer is not into EIDs, to Low Frequency RFID -the most common system- and also High Frequency RFID, from different brands. And this is one of our main points: we are agnostic to the hardware technology you use. We don't want to impose technology switching costs to the farmer. Whatever he uses already is ok, we can adapt -this goes also for feed trucks scales on the feeding side.
What features have we already released on BETA test mode, and what is coming soon?
So far, we have released three features:
1- The ability to upload a spreadsheets with your EIDs for every lot, so that you can sync your data coming either from another software or from your chute readings and update it on the app on a very easy way (see picture below). You will be able to do so within the Cattle Management section, standing on the sublot profile you want to work with.
2- The ability to sync the Cattler mobile app with an RFID reader and pull up the records of a certain animal at any given moment, and being able to treat him right there, or make other decisions. This also works with visual tags, if you work that way, by using the keyboard. This is a big leap because it allows to check and record many different events in a ubiquitous fashion, regardless of having or not internet -it also works offline!-, and solving the constant problem of losing or transferring records to the management platform. In this way all goes smoothly as the farmer works. This won't preclude you to work with EIDs or plastic tags on the Chute section (which is about to be launched), but this a very hand way to do things on the go with a simple smartphone.
So far we released this feature for Android, for UHF tags, and soon (within the next 15 days) it will be available also for LF (which is the acronym for Low Frequency, typically, Allflex or Datamars-like tags). You can access to it from the section Yard Sheet, with a button and the
3- The ability to transfer cattle between lots picking individuals. So far, the app would let you transfer groups of cattle but anonymously, so the transfer would be random. Now, with more and more users integrating EIDs into the platform, it is a must to have every mechanism for managing cattle with an option to pick individuals. Check out this feature within the Cattle Management section, in Cattle Movements. It's already up and running!
Next stop in terms of Individual management will be the Chute section and the Sick Pen management subsection in Animal Health, which is coming next month. Fasten your seatbelt, here we go! I want to subscribe and give it a try.