Opportunity for

• Livestock weighing technology companies interested in enhancing product offering

Opportunity Description

Industry Challenge:

A key challenge limiting uptake of objective genetic selection technologies is the difficulty in collecting accurate performance data. The time, labour and associated costs required to muster, weigh and measure cattle in extensive and remote cattle operations has, until now, made participation in programs such as BREEDPLAN cost prohibitive.

Current Opportunity:

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Central Queensland University (CQU) are seeking interested parties to commercialise weighing algorithms for inclusion in automated livestock management systems. Ongoing technical support is available from the R&D team.

An extensive communication and engagement program suggests the technology will be well received by the industry when commercially available.

Opportunity Background:

Through research funded by Meat & Livestock Australia, CQUniversity has developed highly accurate algorithms for remotely capturing liveweight information from cattle using walk-over-weighing systems.

Automated walk-over-weighing livestock monitoring systems can deliver liveweight data to a degree of accuracy suitable for future inclusion into genetic evaluation programs such as BREEDPLAN. CQU and MLA are currently engaged with BREEDPLAN, working to determine the potential of integrating walk-over-weigh derived data into their genetic evaluation platform.

The potential recognition of these new, more accurate weighing algorithms in automated walk-over-weigh hardware could have profound impacts on participation in genetic evaluation programs.

These systems go beyond traditional one-off crush-side weights taken at muster – the collection of data from the paddock, however remote, provides more frequent and more reliable measures of liveweight gain at an individual animal level. This has the potential to bolster the number of animals with performance records entering genetic evaluation programs, as well as the future reference population for genomic predictions.

CQU has proved the performance and accuracy of the technology by:

• Capturing more than 1 million animal weights using automated systems by deploying the system on commercial properties across northern Australia, and
• Analysing more than 9 million simulated weight values to refine data processing and ensure algorithm accuracy meets BREEDPLAN standards.

The inclusion of the advanced algorithms in walk over weigh technology can improve profitability by:

• Providing accurate and real-time data to inform herd management decisions,
• Monitoring cattle weight and suitability for market,
• Detecting when a cow calves,
• Recording genetic data for growth rate, and
• Reducing labour costs.

To find out more about this opportunity go to "Enquire now"