What Are RFID Ear Tags and How Do They Work with a Weighing Integrator?
The advantages of using RFID-chipped ear tags with herd management software, and how to track live weight gain with RFID and the Scaleep Basic weighing integrator.
Tracking your herd and monitoring the live weight gain of calves and lambs is simple and practical with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) ear tags — commonly known as "chipped tags."
The roswise® herd management software uses RFID-chipped ear tags to make tracking your herd easy and efficient. It works wirelessly and integrates seamlessly with RFID readers and weighing integrators, allowing you to carry out all field operations from your smartphone, tablet, or computer.
RFID Ear Tag → Hand Terminal → Weighing Integrator → Tablet → Herd Tracking / Cloud
Here's how it works step by step:
With roswise® herd management software, you can register every animal on your farm and assign each one a unique digital identity via an RFID ear tag. Once digitally identified, errors such as misreading, mishearing, or miswriting animal data are eliminated. Your herd management software becomes your new register book — and the RFID tags are your animals' IDs.
Once your entire herd is registered in the roswise® herd management software, you can track every animal from birth to death.
To monitor the live weight gain of your animals (calves, heifers, lambs, rams), when an animal steps onto the scale, its weight is automatically sent via Bluetooth to the software open on your smartphone, tablet, or computer — thanks to the weighing integrator.
The animal's unique ID is read contactlessly using the RFID ear tag reader, and the software instantly identifies the animal.
Simply press the save button on your tablet, smartphone, or computer to start tracking live weights accurately and without errors.
You can also explore the roswise® Scaleep Pro Bovix for fully controlled and digital live weight tracking and monitoring of your herd.
What you need for herd tracking:
Smartphone / Tablet / Computer
In farms that don't use herd management software, various manual methods are used to try to keep track of animals — sometimes a physical notebook, sometimes a spreadsheet like Excel. Herd management software offers significant advantages over these approaches. Since it stores your data in a dedicated, farm-specific membership database, the risk of data loss or corruption is much lower than with a notebook or spreadsheet.
Because herd management software can present data relationally, it's far easier to review historical records or trace connections between animals. With roswise®, you can track a calf's dam, date of birth, birth weight, semen information, any illnesses, vaccinations given, and planned vaccinations — all from a single screen. While this is technically possible with a notebook or spreadsheet, as the number of parameters grows, the data must be categorized and grouped to remain useful — creating additional workload for the veterinarian or farm manager. The more data there is, the harder it becomes to track.
On a multi-year farm, this information becomes increasingly complex as family relationships between animals develop. With herd management software, you can easily browse an animal's lineage — its dam, grandam, sire, and grandsire — just like tracing branches on a tree. With easy navigation and a pedigree view visible on a single screen, you can review the big picture at a glance.
