Rural journalist Amy Lawson recently reported in The Land the new and inventive precision livestock management system which Adam and Leonie Coleman – Quambone, NSW – have installed to effectively manage their rotational grazing enterprise.
“Adam and Leonie Coleman, “Wilgara”, west of Quambone, NSW are understood to be the first outside of the Northern Territory to have adopted improved precision livestock management through a home-built in-field cattle weighing system.
The couple have designed and built a portable walk-over weighing system that uses Tru-test load bars and XR3000 software, an Allflex panel reader, and solar energy.
The system was installed in July, together with an Observant telemetry system – using Next G network – to monitor livestock water in-flows and out-flows from tanks, water levels, and even whether there’s a break in electric fence power.
The Colemans run 5000 to 10 000 dry sheep equivalents of trade cattle, consisting of mainly steer, heifers, and dry stock – for short trades of compensatory weight-gain only.
They dryland crop 800ha in a mainly wheat/chickpea rotation and use no-kill cropping as a re-generational tool in pasture management.”