Knowing what an animal weighs used to mean guessing by eye or measuring the girth. Neither gives a farm the record it needs to manage a herd, and neither survives scrutiny at the point of sale. A livestock scale with electronic ear tag reading settles both questions in under a minute per animal.
What changes with a proper system
Weighing for purchase and sale is the obvious use. The larger gain is monitoring how the herd develops — growth rates, health, individual history from birth onward.
The modern crush design also makes veterinary inspection and routine care far easier to carry out, because the animal is already restrained and identified.
How one weighing cycle runs
1 Entry. The animal follows the race into the crush. The gate opens automatically and closes again quickly so weighing can begin.
2 Identification. The reader scans the electronic ear tag, beeps on a successful read and shows the animal on screen.
3 Weighing. A non-slip deck keeps the animal steady. The load bars and indicator lock the weight within three seconds even while the animal is moving and shaking the platform. The indicator beeps and flashes to confirm, displays the figure, and passes it with the tag ID to the herd software on a PC.
4 Exit. Inside a minute the front gate opens to release the animal while the rear gate admits the next one.
What the system consists of
Load bars and crush
Rated up to 4,500 kgf.
Indicator
Displays and stores the weighing record.
Ear tag reader
Automatic panel reader or handheld.
Together these give a confirmed weight and the animal’s record in about 10 seconds.
The indicator
- Shows weight together with the animal record
- Touchscreen for entering and storing information
- Internal memory and Bluetooth for exporting to a PC
- Calculates growth by day, week and month
- Locks the weight within three seconds despite movement
- QWERTY keyboard for classifying animals in plain text
Animals are identified either by electronic ear tag or by a numbered tag.
What the farm gets out of it
- Weight alongside the details that matter — breed, origin, date of entry to the herd, sex, health status
- Herd information manageable from the farm or anywhere else, on a PC running the management software
- Data entered on the spot through the touchscreen, at the crush rather than back in the office
- Fast import and export over Bluetooth
Why livestock weighing needs its own equipment
A live animal never stands still, so the indicator has to hold a stable figure from a signal that is constantly moving — a general-purpose scale simply will not settle. That filtering, and the non-slip deck that keeps the animal calm enough to weigh, are what separate a livestock system from a platform scale of the same capacity.
Application note
KALA Technical Notes
Load bar capacity is chosen for the heaviest animal plus the crush itself, not for the animal alone — a point that is easy to miss when specifying. Tell us the species, the maximum weight you handle and whether you need ear tag reading, and we will put together the right combination.
● Livestock scales, load bars and herd management indicators.