Why weight matters in livestock production is a weighty matter

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 PHOTO: COURTESY

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.

WEIGHT AT BIRTH

Also many farmers don’t know the importance of live, carcass or market weight of their stock.
What farmers should know is that checking the weight of an animal can be such an easy and almost costless task if you have a weigh band sometimes called a weighing belt.

But before we divulge into this important but neglected farm device, it is imperative to know why you should measure the weight of an animal in the first place.

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.

SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS

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.

Our former Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Livestock Kenneth Lusaka; currently Bungoma County Governor, loved to use this butcher man exploitation story. He could say how a farmer who spends over one year with the cow feeding and treating it gets little from it as compared to the butcher man who only spends a few hours with the animal but ends up getting more money than the farmer!

Now you know how weighty the weight of your animal is while selling; don’t be exploited again. In fact, knowing the live weight of an animal will greatly assist you in knowing the current market price of the live animal and therefore get the best value from it.
If you are a beef farmer you cannot just afford to operate without a weigh band; you need it because weight is the basic unit of your trade not shillings (as negotiated by the middleman). I am normally surprised to find beef cattle, sheep and goat ranches that don’t know or don’t have a weigh band yet weight is such a critical aspect in their farming system; especially at the point of selling. You have also seen drug dosages given in terms of mls or cc against a certain body weight range for example de-wormers and antibiotics pegged on the weight of the animal?

You need to know the approximate weight of your animals in kilos to be able to administer an effective dose. Most farmers do guess work and this has serious implications in causing drug resistance and this is a main challenge in the current pharmaceutical industry.

Weighing band will help you overcome all this challenges. What is a weighing band? This is a simple tape or belt like farm implement that is measures and converts length into kilos. It measures the circumference of the girth area and converts this into weight in Kgs. The girth area I would say is the chest area of a livestock and the measurement is taken round just behind the forelegs to the shoulder blade and round.
You are now probably thinking that it is such an expensive device to acquire on the contrary it very cheap and comes with no further maintenance costs.

I bought one last year from Medi Link Supplies located in Development House in Nairobi’s Moi Avenue and it is still as good as new and for only Sh1,400. In my experience a weigh band is relatively accurate in measuring weight and will give an accuracy of +or- 10 Kgs when compared with conventional weighing machines. The rule of the thumb is to ensure your safety always when handling animals to avoid injuries; observe the animal’s personality traits - if it is a rowdy or calm animal before attempting to measure its girth.

A rowdy animal will require that you put a lot of caution when moving near it to pass the weighing band round – keep a safe distance. You may need to restrain some animals although calm ones can be measured while standing and without restraint. For accurate weight measurements ensure the animal stand straight and still.

The writer is a veterinarian surgeon and a lecturer