Farmer resilience will be tested
OPINION: Perhaps Captain Bligh’s infamous line, “the beatings will continue until morale improves”, best summed up the mood of New Zealand’s weary agribusiness sector at Fieldays last year.
Used by over 18,000 farms in the UK & Ireland, Flockwatch allows sheep farmers to manage their flock in a simple, easy to use app, reducing paperwork and allowing better management decisions. Launched in the UK & Ireland earlier this year, the app is already proving to be hugely popular with over 3,000 flocks in the UK already using the platform.
According to well-known Youtuber, Cammy Wilson from Scotland, the Flockwatch app is essentially an 'all-in-one solution'.
"It's where I can input movements, individual sheep references and notes, register lambs against any particular sheep, and record details of any medication event including product details."
Herdwatch was co-founded out of a farmer-owned co-operative in Ireland back in 2014 and currently has around 18,000 users there and in the UK.
"We realised with the arrival of smartphones and other such devices that there was an opportunity to bring farmers on a journey to digitisation and to disprove the assumption that farmers are computer illiterate," explains Mervyn Harvey, head of growth for the company.
"We have delivered a simple, easy to use and reliable app, which in a recent survey of over 1,600 of our members, showed that it saves farmers an average of three hours a week on paperwork."
As in the UK and Ireland, NZ farmers can manage their flock as individuals or in groups, record lambing and track ewe performance, record weights to track average daily gains and capture medicine records for farm assurance. There is also the ability to connect an EID Reader to scan ear tags and view an animal's history or add records easily.
The system also allows users to map their farm to keep paddock records for nitrogen and other inputs. Meanwhile, users can also take advantage of smart devices camera functions to record photos of individual animals or purchase receipts.
Harvey says, in practice, users can use a smartphone or more typically a tablet-based device, mounted alongside the handling race.
"Any data is saved directly to the cloud for future use, meaning any accidents involving devices, can still access that data at a later date," he explains. "Meanwhile, multiple users can gain access to the subscription, so that the whole farm team can see data as it is recorded, while also communicating task requirements amongst one another."
Herdwatch chief executive and co-founder Fabian Payaud says they are delighted to launch Flockwatch in New Zealand to help local sheep farmers there make better and faster on-farm decisions.
"Flockwatch is as much about monitoring flock performance as it is about compliance and helps sheep farmers manage their flock, individually or in movs, in a simple and easy to use app," he explains.
"Up to this point, anyone who wanted to manage their flock had had very little to choose from, with most relying on pen and paper."
Kiwi farmers are invited to look for themselves, with the offer of a 90-day free trial with no commitments.
