Why you must keenly watch your dairy animal’s weight

Majority of farmers don’t care much about the weight of their animals; despite knowing that weight is a critical parameter in their health and growth. In fact, measuring human weight and height is a common trade in every town street. 

Many people have weighing machines in their houses for daily weight checks. If you take your child to the clinic weight is the foremost parameter the medic takes. Weight is equally important in livestock production not only for health purposes but also for commercial reasons.

The apathy in livestock weight is probably as a result of perceived difficulty in taking an animal’s weight; you imagine driving a stubborn bull onto a weighing machine and calming it to stay there for a minute or so or carrying a yelling pig onto a weight scale and say that’s too much. 

Many people have weighing machines in their houses for daily weight checks. If you take your child to the clinic weight is the foremost parameter the medic takes. Weight is equally important in livestock production not only for health purposes but also for commercial reasons.

The apathy in livestock weight is probably as a result of perceived difficulty in taking an animal’s weight; you imagine driving a stubborn bull onto a weighing machine and calming it to stay there for a minute or so or carrying a yelling pig onto a weight scale and say that’s too much. 

Weight is perhaps the main indicator of good or poor health in an animal when measured in relation to its age and physiological status; calf weight at birth and weaning are important in animal husbandry. Sick animals tend to lose weight while healthy animals gain weight; (note that animals can also be obese). Weight is the report card you write for yourself after a measured period of feeding and it should give you your effort’s worth. How else will you talk of a successful feeding programme when you haven’t measured the weight at the beginning and at the end? 

Yet, this information can assist you in knowing the suitable feeds for your stock. Weight gain is determined by amount of feed an animal is able to convert into muscle tissue after catering for other production functions like milk production.

But before you judge the health of your stock using their weight you still need to know their weight so that you are able to weigh the amount of food they need per body size. If you are a commercial farmer producing for the market; live weight should be your bargaining tool.

Note, the middlemen and even buyers on the market will not like it that you know the approximate weight of your animals because they know that is what determines their profit margins from the carcass weight. You can say you are good at estimating the live weight of your stock but you are likely to underestimate and buyers love it when you make this costly mistake on the animal’s live weight.

For example if you mistake your beef animal to be 500 kilos when it is actually 650kgs you have lost a lot of money at the current market price of Sh500 per kilo of meat. You have just thrown away money to the butcher.