weighing Archives - American Cattlemen

Accurate Livestock Weights Drive Successful Operations

From optimizing feed and dosing medications to maximizing profitability, weight plays a crucial role in cattle ranch operations. With reliable livestock scales, producers can obtain actionable insights and improve herds.

The Importance of Weighing Cattle

Weight is an essential benchmark for a successful cattle ranch. Although scales are integral equipment at many ranches, weight is often estimated visually or with weight tape. Estimates introduce human error and can lead to significant financial losses due to overfeeding or underselling.

Routinely weighing cattle with dependable scales eliminates the guesswork. Weight is a conventional way to establish health benchmarks, monitor growth, dose medications and analyze other aspects of herd management. Accurate data enables ranchers to make strategic decisions, strengthening operations and maximizing bottom lines.

Livestock scales are often paired with specialized software to determine metrics such as rate of gain and shrink, turning weight data into actionable insights for herd management. Ranchers can utilize the rate of gain to adjust feed plans and determine the next stage of production. It also helps with timing market sales and ensuring livestock meet target weights.

Supporting Ranchers with High-quality Livestock Scales and Customer Service

Understanding successful livestock operations require durable scales and instrumentation, Rice Lake Weighing Systems has worked closely with producers to provide systems that enhance weighing and data collection. Rice Lake has been an industry-leading provider of innovative weighing and measurement solutions across a wide range of industries since 1946.

According to Sam Solie, livestock scale product manager at Rice Lake, a focus on supporting customer experiences makes Rice Lake stand out. “We make sure to take care of the customer. We want them to have the scales and instrumentation needed for a thriving ranch.”

As a beef cattle producer herself, Solie understands that scale integrity is about more than design—a high-quality construction is the foundation of a long-lasting weighing system. Rice Lake livestock scales are manufactured in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, by specially trained welders and fabricators who have completed a comprehensive training program before beginning scale construction. Customers who purchase Rice Lake livestock scales receive high-quality systems built to withstand harsh conditions.

Solie takes a hands-on approach to customer support. She’s committed to building close partnerships with Rice Lake livestock scale distributors and ranchers, understanding their operations and scale mechanics, and aiding with any questions. Solie provides on-site training for Rice Lake sales teams and distributors, helping ensure they have the product knowledge and practical expertise needed to serve cattle producers effectively.

Selecting the Optimal Livestock Scale for Your Ranch

A variety of livestock scales are on the market, but the type of scale is dependent on each cattle ranch’s site and herd size. Solie explains, “The first thing to consider about a livestock scale is where the animals will be weighed.” Determining the weighing location is a crucial factor in selecting suitable types of livestock scales. For operations that weigh animals at one location, stationary animal scales may be ideal, while mobile and portable scales are ideal for multisite ranches.

The size of the herd determines whether a single or group animal scale is necessary. Single animal scales are ideal for smaller ranches. Group animal scales are essential for high-volume ranches, as they can weigh numerous head at a time, streamlining weighing operations and maximizing efficiency.

Ranches that use weight data for herd growth or vaccination dosages may benefit from utilizing a basic weight indicator. Ranches that buy and sell livestock may require an indicator package with specialized software to calculate the rate of gain, export data and complete transactions.

A New Mobile Livestock Scale from Rice Lake

Rice Lake offers a variety of scale systems to meet the demanding needs of nearly any ranch. Recently, Rice Lake released the MAS-M2, an enhanced mobile animal scale designed to weigh multiple livestock simultaneously. Ideal for multisite weighing, it is a durable, lightweight scale that can be towed behind a standard vehicle and withstand uneven terrain. It obtains Legal for Trade weights without the need to be recalibrated, even at locations with up to a 6% grade.

The MAS-M2 is an easy-to-use scale that promotes animal and operator safety with treaded flooring, a low-profile platform, higher gate panels and quick-release swing gates. It is also equipped with locking systems and independent air-ride suspension to prevent equipment damage.

The onboard weigh center features a weatherproof 920i® digital indicator and printer. This enables ranchers to complete Legal for Trade transactions onsite and export data for reports. Equipped with Group Weighing and Rate of Gain software, ranchers can make informed decisions based on total weight, headcount, shrink, daily rate of gain, average gain and more.

During the product development process, Solie considered distributors and wanted to make maintenance easier for the MAS-M2. Routine maintenance is good practice for any scale, but it is required for Legal for Trade certification. Many cattle ranches sell livestock based on weight, meaning routine maintenance and recertification are necessary.

“The MAS-M2 makes weighing and maintenance simpler,” says Solie. The new-and-improved scale enables greater access to key components for scale technicians. Swift troubleshooting means less scale downtime, preventing unexpected scale malfunctions and ensuring legally compliant weighing.

Rugged Cattle Scales Improve Herd Management

Accurate livestock weight data is essential to improving herds and maximizing profits. Paired with data management software, ranchers use weight to make strategic decisions about production processes, herd management and sales.

Rice Lake strives to provide easy-to-use, durable and trustworthy solutions for any application. Taking care of the customer, they offer a variety of livestock scales and instrumentation, ensuring each ranch can integrate the optimal solution and use weight data to enhance operations.

To learn more about Rice Lake and its livestock weighing systems, visit www.ricelake.com/livestockscales.

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Weighing Success

On any working ranch or farm, producers depend on powerful performance measurement tools to evaluate the health and wellbeing of their herd. Key measurement tools need to be dependable and rugged, including weigh scales, which provide ranchers with an assessment of calves’ weight gain. This allows them to receive accurate treatment dosages and proper nutrition as well as a glimpse into the animal’s health and performance.

Rice Lake Weighing Systems has been building and perfecting livestock scales since 2011. Originally founded in 1946 in Rice Lake, WI, as Thomas & Johnson Scale Service, the company provided pivots and bearings for mechanical scales used on dairy farms in the area. Eventually, the company changed its name to Rice Lake Weighing Systems and has been making an impact on the weighing and measurement industry ever since.

Using What you Can

By utilizing advanced manufactured processes and state-of-the-art technology, the company has become a global leader in livestock scales.

“Our company vision is ‘Take care of the customer and the rest of the business will take care of itself” and ‘To be the best by every measure.’ We do our very best to take care of the customer and make sure our products are of very high quality,” says Sam Solie, product manager for livestock scales at Rice Lake. “Our staff works hard to make sure we are here for our customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. Over the years, we have expanded our company and added new products.”

Indeed, Rice Lake offers a wide variety of products to help satisfy customers and the needs of their applications. The company’s stationary livestock scale receives updates and is one of the most popular models. Specifically, the MAS-LM stationary mechanical animal scale provides reliable, accurate weighing for ranchers and processors that prefer a mechanical pipe lever weighing system.

Multiple Sizes

“We offer this scale in many different sizes and have the opportunity to do customs to help satisfy customer needs,” Solie says. “The stationary scales are very robust and built to last.”

Rice Lake’s stationary weighing models comes in a variety of sizes and boast various flooring options. In addition, the main weighbridge on stationary models is built with heavy-duty steel to stand up to the toughest jobs. Rice Lake also understands that the layout and functionality of each ranch and farm is different, so there are many different style customs to fit in sale barns, ranches, feedlots and county fairs.

“Our mobile animal scale is another popular model that customers use to be able to go out and weigh their animals in the field instead of needing to bring them on-site. Currently, we are working on updates to our mobile scale, with updated features customers are requesting,” Solie says. The current model of the MAS-M mobile livestock scale features a low-profile weighing platform to allow for faster and easier multi-site livestock weighing.

“On our mobile scale, we offer a very easy-to-use scale with instrumentation. The indicator on the side of the scale helps simplify weighing and allows producers to keep track of animals the customer is shipping out,” Solie adds.

Thorough Evaluation

While Rice Lake has developed some of the most durable scales to meet the specific needs of farmers and ranchers alike, there is not a “one size fits all” weighing solution. The company strives to provide custom products that are perfectly suited to every application.

When looking for a livestock scale, Solie advises producers to consider some key factors – namely, scales need to be accurate, durable and easy to use. As Solie explains, having an accurate scale to weigh livestock on-site is a huge benefit that lowers costs by avoiding shrink. To help calculate the potential savings when investing in a Rice Lake livestock scale, the company provides a simple livestock shrink calculator on its website.

“When evaluating weighing systems, the scales need to be durable in order to withstand the job of moving and weighing animals. Making sure the scale and instrumentation is simple to use is another big item,” Solie says. “When you are out weighing your animals, you want to make sure it is easy to weigh them without having to do hours of set up each time. Once you are done weighing the animals, it is also imperative that the scale and instrumentation is easy to close down.”

Deciding Whether or Not to Grow

In addition, when purchasing a livestock scale, customers need to evaluate their herd size and if they need the scale on-site permanently or require a mobile unit for different locations.

“Shrink is a big factor that needs to be considered when you own livestock. If you send your cattle to a sale barn to be weighed, the stress they go through during the travel process makes them lose a good amount in shrink,” Solie says. “The benefits of weighing the animals on-site is that you are able to weigh them before shipping – saving money that you would typically lose in shrink.”

Continuous Evolution

Since its inception nearly 80 years ago, Rice Lake has continued to enhance and improve its product offerings, expanding into a myriad of industries. Because of the company’s focus on continuous improvement, the Rice Lake team is well-versed in incorporating technological advancements and state-of-the-art instrumentation into its product offerings.

Looking ahead, Solie says data will continue to be “king” within the livestock weighing industry.

“The more data we can provide from the scale to a rancher’s database or herd management software drives overall process efficiency gain,” Solie says.

In addition, producers have come to rely on technology that provides continuous feedback on the status of their livestock. That’s why communication, specifically being able to connect wirelessly between the scale and software, is paramount for today’s producers. As such, Rice Lake will be offering even more communication options to keep producers “in the know.”

“We will also see scales with self-reporting diagnostics and self-healing capabilities,” Solie says. “The scale’s uptime is critical for ranch operations, being down costs time and money. We are working towards scales that monitor their health and report errors and potential concerns. The next step is to create scale systems that can automatically adapt to error conditions and allow scales to continue to work at critical times.”

To learn more about Rice Lake Weighing Systems and its complete line of livestock weighing systems, visit www.ricelake.com.

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Accurate Weights Drive Livestock Success