Farmer story
He was looking for ways to streamline the way he works. With a fulltime job, next to his sheep farming business, he welcomed faster and simpler methods to help him run his sheep farm and manage his flock. Ultimately, to spend more time on his other passion: surfing. That’s where iLivestock came in.
I started farming sheep about ten years ago. In 2016, I took on a tenancy at Trewithick Farm in Breage, in the far south of the Cornish peninsula growing my business quite a bit. I started out with five bottle LLeyn ewes and currently have a commercial flock of 150 Suffolks, Dorsets, and Lleyns ewes; and Suffolk, Charollais and Texel pedigree flocks.
I run my sheep farm next to a fulltime job. I am always looking for ways to streamline the way I work. I was looking for something to store and process farm information electronically, and be able to do it while you're in the field rather than having to make a note of what you've done, and then come back to the farm.
I started using the iLivestock management app when it first came out. At the time, iLivestock were the only ones on the market. I haven’t stopped using it since. There aren’t many features in the app I am not using: I use the whole lot! iLivestock is a simple method to manage my pedigree flock of Suffolk sheep for example. I use the app for keeping note of the pedigree line.
The app also helps me organise my farm admin: not my favourite thing in the world. I remember the old-fashioned way of keeping animal records by using the governmental holding register. The ones you had to download and fill out by hand. There were also these computer based programmes where you got to keep the same type of information, but you’d still have to write it down, bring it back to the farm and then input it. It was not the easiest way to keep track of your animal movements and sheep treatments, and it would literally take forever. We’ve come a long way since then.
Not all farmers realise they no longer have to have paper records for animal health inspections, alongside their electronic records. A younger generation is coming through now, which are looking into technology for the very reason that I took it on: because they want to be more streamlined and make things more efficient. Farmers nowadays have less time to farm, and often have another day job to work around. There is less appetite to spend all day out, sorting sheep, and then three hours at home in the evening, sorting out paperwork. They just want to do the job, get it done, and then come home and then have their own time. In my view, livestock management apps are the way to do it.
iLivestock is in your pocket all the time with the phone. You don't even have to have the ear tag scanner with you. You can just type the number of the sheep with whatever you're doing and do it that way. The app integration with eWeigh in my Rappa yard means that I can record commercial weights of the lambs throughout their growing time up until they go to market.
The thing with the app: it's so self-explanatory. You can give it to anybody and they would navigate their way around it pretty quickly. You don't need to have any shortcuts: it speaks for itself. I like that you can have it on multiple devices. I have it on my phone in my pocket in the field and when I come back in, I continue on the iPad using a bigger screen. I have a shepherdess helping me on the farm during lambing time. We both use the app and work with the same real-time animal records. All of this is very practical.
Plus, it doesn't matter whether you got 10 ewes or 4000 sheep, the price is the same for small and large flock holders alike.
I like iLivestock’s technical support. In the early days, I remember a last-minute panic one evening, I couldn’t get data off my phone when I had to go to the livestock market the next day. The support team helped me to get this sorted. I also use eWeigh, the hardware tool that integrates with my weight crate and EID reader, that runs through an android tablet. At first, I was having issues with getting the data from my tablet to talk to my android phone, because I use both mediums, but with the personal technical assistance we got that fixed.