Electronic Weigh Scales (with EID) - Productivity grant

[GreenerGrass]

Looks like this scheme will re-open and would really like to get an electronic weigh system on farm.

Shearwell brochure has just landed on my desk and EID weigh crate (which doesn't look to have drafting?) is £5,350 without stock recorder! Seems a hell of a lot of money. I don't have a stick reader type device and would also be looking at one of these.

I do like Shearwell and I use their tags NLMD/stockmove app, but this seems a lot of money. Also I'm not convinced on having the EID reader fixed to the crate - surely rather than spending that money would be better to have a mobile (stick type reader) to either save the data or communicate it to the app, and then it could also be used for management tasks and recording at other times eg: lambing.

I've seen on the forum readers mounted to side of crates for this purpose @TGM , and the information can then be downloaded and imported into software eg: nlmd which will plot the weights and charts. I am just wondering what others have managed to do and whether something along these lines would be eligible for the grant support. It's a lot of money and I would rather have a good flexible system that enables me to get the most of the technology, rather than something expensive clamped to the side of the crate and redundant for 99% of the time.

 

[TGMJane]

Hi there - yes, both the handheld readers and the stick readers can be attached to the weigh crate and then used elsewhere so it's a really good option as the readers are so portable and you have a semi-automated system. If you want to chat through the options please do let us know.