FARMER STORY
Abby Cook
South Cotswalds, U.K.
A full-time agribusiness consultant, I also run my own small flock of mainly Herdwick sheep.
FARMER STORY
Abby Cook
South Cotswalds, U.K.
A full-time agribusiness consultant, I also run my own small flock of mainly Herdwick sheep.
Different farms, same challenges
“I can see the way the industry is moving…”
I also didn’t want to spend a huge amount of money on desktop computer software. I've got my phone with me all the time and iLivestock makes systems simple, really slick, and far more business minded.
Money and margins
From small flocks like mine, to larger commercial farms, today, one person is doing more work now than ever because of squeezed margins from higher costs. Because of this, there's a real place for this kind of affordable kit. Information, that’s the key. If you're not monitoring it, you can't measure it, and you can't avoid waste or improve what you do.
I run breeding ewes, I also run replacements to put into the flock, selling on my male lambs and anything I don’t think is good enough for breeding. After weaning in August, I’m looking at improving my ewes’ condition before tupping in November. I’ll weigh the ewes to monitor them, then again at weaning. I’ll also regularly weigh the lambs to check their gain, recording mineral drench and any meds as I go.
“iLivestock makes it so easy to capture stuff!”
From this, I can work out roughly daily weight gain. Because they are slightly slower growing, my native breed doesn’t really fit the commercial standard data, so what I’m trying to do this year is get my flock baseline figures from birth.
Logging baseline figures helps me set targets, and means I can try and improve year-on-year. iLivestock makes it so easy to capture stuff, I then just look at it and go, right, okay, how are we doing?
Making life easier
Efficiency is also critical to improving margins. This summer I got the eTagReader. I love the fact that it's all so financially accessible to smaller farmers. With a reader you’re capturing your data and monitoring your animals as you go in the field or via the weigh crate. Adding tags, creating records, logging weights, reminders, notes and meds, I've been really impressed with how slick it is. I find it's very intuitive to use, and it saves me so much time.
With options to add ‘red flags’ for persistent individual health issues, even simple things like withdrawal periods, I don't have to think, right, when did I do that? It just makes life so much easier.
It also allows me to apply batch medication information across a group of animals, avoiding mind-numbing data input. So yeah, I love it. When I discovered this, I was literally skipping around like, oh, this makes my life so easy! And there's still a lot more data that I want to collect, so that I can get a good picture, to build the best flock I can.
As essential as your sheepdogs
As essential as your sheepdogs, your truck or your quad! iLivestock takes you from playing at it to being more businesslike. I also use the app a lot for movements. But, if I’m not able to check in on my flock, my parents can log in and see where the flock should be. Sharing access to the app, again, makes things a lot easier and more efficient.
Second to none support
In my work a lot of people ask me about the best software, and I always say that with iLivestock there’s a couple of things that I really, really love. The company’s approach and the support you get. It’s amazing. Times when I have no idea how to do something, or I've had an issue, for whatever reason, when I contact the team, they couldn't be more helpful. Particularly when I am in a hurry, have an inspection or something's gone wrong, and I need that data! The support is second to none.
