Playing the Weight-guessing Game? Here's The Scale Necessities.
While it seems easy enough to eyeball animals to guess individual weights, the human eye can be deceiving.
There are several excellent reasons to have scales on hand, even as early as when calves are first born. For instance, did you know having an exact birth weight for newborn calves is one of the most profit-generating factors on a cattle operation? It's true. Knowing a calf's birth weight is key for accurate calculation of birth weight EPD and evaluating calving ease. It's also a key component when selecting a bull.
If you have children showing in 4H or FFA, digital scales can quickly determine which class their animal will be showing in. But, even more so? Scales are crucial when it comes to treating livestock.
When dosing antibiotics and parasite control products to inaccurate weights, there can be consequences, especially when “eyeballing.”
Antibiotic doses vary greatly given differences in body weight. When administering antibiotics without capturing accurate, individual bodyweights, animals may be under-dosed, decreasing antibiotic efficacy and creating a poor treatment response. Overall, this can result in increased treatment and labor costs because of disease relapse. Alternatively, overdosing can increase risk of violative residues.
Underdosing dewormers can contribute to resistance issues. When deworming livestock and horses without dosing to accurate bodyweights, their risk for parasite resistance can increase, impacting how easily parasites can be controlled in the future.
Follow these easy steps to capture accurate weights for effective treatments:
To help you capture accurate bodyweights, we recommend the following products.
