The demand for livestock products is increasing throughout the globe alongside population growth, urbanization, and overall growth of income. Financially, feed costs represent 70% of all variable costs of livestock production. Quality feed improves livestock productivity, resulting in lower age at first calving and shorter calving intervals.
For agriculture operations, that means increased productive life and profit. Proper feed timing helps with immunity, reproduction, and even environmental sustainability, as energy and nutrients from the land turns into highly nutritious food. This could be a matter of life or death for some countries as food demands continue to grow.
Animal Source Food Feed Production from 2009-2016
- United States: 14.1% increase
- Brazil: 18.8% increase
- Europe: 24.5% increase
- China: 74.8% increase
- Africa and the Middle East: 106.3% increase
Demand for feed has introduced technological solutions. Top solutions include:
- Analytical and operational technologies—like sensors and software—to track inventory and supply chains
- Feed quality enhancements for nutrition and digestibility
- Feed maintenance to ensure nutritional quality during off-season storage
- Specialized ingredients for enhanced animal nutrition
Sustainable Livestock Farming
In agriculture, especially operations engaged in Precision Livestock Farming (PLF), sustainability is a business imperative. Cargill calls sustainability “the new normal.”
Sustainability means that an operation can maintain a process. For PLF farmers, sustainability requires technologies with sensors, software, and modern feed strategies to reduce livestock emissions.
FeedView® Software Provides Detail for Critical Feed Operations
BinMaster introduces exact inventory measurements to PLF. Many swine, cattle, dairy, and poultry operations that utilize BinMaster sensors and software can eliminate complex spreadsheets. Plus, their employees no longer need to climb feed bins to manually measure the contents.
Sensor measurements send cloud-based data to an application like FeedView®. This reduces exhaustive paperwork, guesswork, and endless emails.
FeedView can be accessed via phone, tablet, or PC, transforming the way farms schedule feed deliveries. The software allows users to manage different rations or formulations, record the use of medicated feeds, and track when they are fed to each feed group. Historical reports show start and stop dates to comply with Veterinary Feed Directives. The software scales from a single silo up to multi-national producers, ensuring everyone in the operation is making decisions based on the same information.
FeedView calculates projected feed usage based on how much each animal consumes each day. Its dashboards provide an overview of each bin monitored and projects days until empty, highlighting bins that are getting low and are in need of a delivery. It calculates the amount of feed and the amount of headspace—or room available—in each bin. This ensures the feed delivered will fit into the bins, reducing the risk of overfilling.
Customizable alerts are sent via text message or email when inventory levels get low.
FeedView Software, Paired with BinMaster Sensors, Offers:
- Remote monitoring via phone, tablet, or PC
- 24/7 monitoring anywhere there’s internet access
- Highly scalable for one or many bins, and for one or multiple operations
- Easily adaptable for single or tandem bins
- Accurate, reliable bin information updates automatically
- Eliminates manual monitoring to save time and enhance safety
- Historical reporting optimizes purchasing and auditing
