Scale Options & Location

[Stocker Steve]

I am looking at a basic Mass Load or Tru Test system to use next to my headgate and home built wood chute system. I would appreciate some input on these questions:

How much a measurement error will I have will animals pulling back against the head gate?

Do you give anything up with going with the less expensive Mass Load system?

 

[MikeC]

I am looking at a basic Mass Load or Tru Test system to use next to my headgate and home built wood chute system. I would appreciate some input on these questions:

How much a measurement error will I have will animals pulling back against the head gate?

Do you give anything up with going with the less expensive Mass Load system?

There is no way to know the measurement error with them pulling against the gate.

Don't put the head in the gate to weigh them. Just close the head gate and slide a pipe in behind him to keep him from backing up.

 

[SimmAngus]

I am looking at a basic Mass Load or Tru Test system to use next to my headgate and home built wood chute system. I would appreciate some input on these questions:

How much a measurement error will I have will animals pulling back against the head gate?

Do you give anything up with going with the less expensive Mass Load system?

We use a Tru-Test SR2000 head and the SHD Load Bars under our squeeze chute. The animal enters the chute and catches itself in the head gate. We squeeze it and the animal is motionless. The scale head has some type of dampening calculation software to aid in stabilizing the reading. I'm not sure what you mean by a lesser system, but I would guess you will give up some accurcy and and sorting abilities, like calculating ADG etc. After our animals are weighed the id's and weights are downloaded to my laptop and into a spreadsheet. With the tru-test system you can attach an RFID reader to scan the RFID Tag as the animal enters the chute. I have seen a similar system to mine but the load bars were in an alleyway under an aluminum platform. The animal was brought up the alley and stopped on the platform. The Tru-Test head is really fast to lock onto a weight.

 

[lukelangford]

You'll find it counter-productive to have a set of digital scales with ANY margin of error. This (in my experience) is not a place to look to go cheap or improvise. We run a tru test system with Tru-test's scale cage. Wasn't cheap, but there is zero guessing. The seperate cage allows for some prep before they enter the squeeze chute, we're able to continue work and give the guys at the chute a head's up as to what needs to be done.

 

[SimmAngus]

You'll find it counter-productive to have a set of digital scales with ANY margin of error. This (in my experience) is not a place to look to go cheap or improvise. We run a tru test system with Tru-test's scale cage. Wasn't cheap, but there is zero guessing. The seperate cage allows for some prep before they enter the squeeze chute, we're able to continue work and give the guys at the chute a head's up as to what needs to be done.

Lukelangford makes a good point, sometimes when things are busy I wish I had the scale further upstream.