Beef Farming

Growing scrutiny around the application of materials like muck and slurry is further inflating the administration burden placed on businesses, increasing costs and the risk of prosecution. Using our application control products, it’s possible to record exact values of which materials have been applied, where and when, with details pinpointed on digital maps. Integrating your flow meters for slurry – or ISOBUS solutions for solid materials – allows you to not only seamlessly report on work undertaken, but also apply each material within constraints.

Supporting cattle can involve multiple field operations throughout the year, and using guidance for each can result in collective savings. Using a Trimble display for manual guidance while mowing ensures that each pass fills the bed of the mower, reducing passes through the field. The coverage logging feature continually displays the area worked, so leaving the field to reload or attend a calving heifer is no issue: simply return to the spot you were previously at and continue where you left off, day or night.

Permanent pasture, temporary grass or arable cropping will benefit from accurate field mapping records. Understanding the available acres to plant or place head of cattle is important to make the most of your assets. Use a Trimble Catalyst to enrich the detail of your holding with the mapping of features such as water troughs or underground pipes. For larger areas utilise a display & receiver on a vehicle, maps can then be shared with operators or contractors ahead of work on the ground. Digital records of the holding are a useful asset for any activity; they can be shared to personnel or machinery to allow joined-up working, and are easily updated as features or areas changed.

Our modular systems allow steering to be added to your machines at the same time or later than a display, so you can grow with the technology and accuracy at a pace which suits you. Install steering to older machines or when the new one arrives on farm. Not only can machines steer in straight lines across a field, they can steer around headland circuits and even complete end of row turns. Using the same guidance during the silage-making process ensures that each machine is making the most of every pass, the rake perfectly following three mower swaths for example.

A variety of tasks calls for a variety of implements. From feeder wagons to fertiliser spreaders, controlling them all can be a complex and expensive affair. Trimble displays can remove the need for any other controller in the cab however, lowering your investment cost and vastly reducing in-cab clutter. Using ISOBUS technology, it’s possible to integrate multiple implements into a single display – and some implements can even benefit from using GPS to automate functions, such as section control on a drill or mower combination. Vantage ASC can integrate a Trimble display with existing ISOBUS controls or retrofit the technology to your implements and tractors.

Using weather stations to capture real-time data helps you make immediate decisions to suit the day ahead, but cross referencing this with historic information can add real value, helping you to understand what results can be achieved. Referencing livestock parasite instances with temperature data makes it easier to be proactive with treatments and reduce risks. Similarly, drug effectiveness may be improved in certain climatic conditions compared to others, or fertiliser applications may be altered in order to take advantage of forecast rainfall.

Be it straw, grains or muck, there are a whole host of materials being moved to support the rearing of cattle. Understanding the inputs is important, and can make the difference between high and average performance in a Total Mixed Ration (TMR), for example. Rather than multiple weighing solutions on different implements, it could be more efficient to install hydraulic weigh cells to your primary loader. Simply calibrate to the attachment and the rest will look after itself, recording each lift and totalling over the period of use. Understand the tonnage of muck from a building or average weight of silage bales to make informed decisions on spreading area or additional fodder imports.