Six top tips to set your operation up for success in 2025
While there are many aspects of beef production that can’t be controlled, setting yourself up for success in the year ahead isn’t impossible.
Using data, collected on-farm and further down the supply chain, is a key component of optimising your operation’s productivity and profitability, and we’re proud to work with beef producers to save them time, give them greater certainty, enhance their operation’s sustainability and help them better know their business.
Below are our six top tips for setting your operation up for success in 2025:
1. Identify your objectives and goals
It is important to have clear objectives within the business for what you want to achieve or improve.
Have a think about these questions, which we’ve provided example answers to:
What is important to your business and what drives productivity and profitability?
Turning off backgrounding cattle with the best weight for age.
Using sires producing the optimal progeny for our markets.
What data do I need to collect to inform these decisions?
Weight, date of birth, purchase information.
Sire ID, carcase and feedlot feedback information.
What decisions can you make to influence your goals and objectives?
Identify best weight for age animals and where they were sourced from.
Use forecasting data better for marketing opportunities.
Rank sires by progeny performance, cull underperforming sires.
2. Set up your crush-side device
While having a crush-side data collection system is becoming more popular, very few producers have received support to optimise the system to make data collection and decision-making as seamless as possible in the yards.
The last thing you want to do is slow everything down and have a cranky team. There are a few simple steps you can take to save the worry:
● Set up templates on Tru-Test and Gallagher devices: Templates allow a quick-select option to ensure all correct traits, treatments and life data fields are on the screen for the type of session you are running e.g. preg testing. The use of dropdown lists and recurring traits can save a lot of data entry crush-side.
● Ensure traits, life data, activities and treatments are all set up correctly: One of the biggest mistakes we see is these fields not being set up correctly which causes huge issues later on with the ability to use the data. For example, pregnancy status set up as a life data field means you can only ever record one pregnancy status.
There are five key constraints to collecting individual animal data we frequently see, which can cause issues with generating valuable insights.
These include infrastructure, hardware, data entry, saving and storing data, and extracting the right value.
Understanding these limitations and how they present in your operation is key to overcoming them.
· Read more: How to collect individual animal data
3. Decide what data to collect
The data you collect will be specific to your objectives and goals, the type of operation you’re running and the market you’re targeting.
Breeding operation
Breeding data is focused on how to measure and optimise breeder performance. This can include weights, lactation status, pregnancy test and foetal age.
Most producers will target basic key performance indicators such as weaning weight, weaning percentage, pregnancy percentage, and wet rebreed percentage.
Beyond these basic KPIs, there are additional data points that can be collected to drive further decision-making.
· Read more: What data should I collect on my breeders?
Growing and backgrounding operation
Growing and backgrounding data is focused on how to measure and optimise performance on-farm and once animals have exited the business.
Collecting this data enables the analysis and comparison of performance across property of origin, source PIC, breed, sex, HGP status, class, sire and dam, date of birth or year brand, first weight, property and paddock.
Feedlot and carcase feedback data can also be linked to the individual animal’s performance on-farm.
4. Pull all your data together
There can be many sources of data within an operation, and sometimes this can be overwhelming, however pulling it all together and drawing insights from it can improve decision-making.
Data sources include:
● Optiweigh integration: View your Optiweigh session data on the Black Box Growing Management Dashboard.
● Gallagher integration: No data uploads are required if you have an Animal Performance Plus account - Black Box can automatically import the data for you to see your insights within minutes.
● NLIS transfers: Uploading these files once a month will ensure the numbers on your Black Box account are accurately reflecting what is on-farm and will fill in the information in the herd inventory.
● Sales and purchases: Easily import the individual animal sale and purchase data from saleyards using AgriNous or Outcross Systems.
● Audits (EU or organic) and reporting: Having a central location for all data on your cattle allows for easy report generation for audits, bank managers and accountants.
The benefits of using Black Box are not limited to data inside the farm gate. Producers can access information about their stock through the supply chain, allowing them to gain insights into the production system and make better and more informed decisions. The ability to link carcase and feedlot feedback data to on-farm information, and identify trends over time and lost opportunity can be used to help inform marketing decisions in the year ahead.
Black Box works with many feedlots across Australia and can provide feedlot performance data from participating feedlots.
5. Assign responsibility for data collection
Having a dedicated person to take charge of the data collection and uploading the information is an easy way to simplify the process.
We recommend ensuring sessions are set up the night before heading to the yards, and having a process in place for uploading data (e.g. end of month, end of the mustering round).
6. Reach out with questions, don’t go it alone
Our dedicated and knowledgeable team is here to support you every step of the way. Whether it’s getting started with data, improving your current system, troubleshooting a problem, or setting up feedback data from the feedlot or processor you supply, we’re just a phone call or email away and very happy to help.
Please reach out to your customer support team directly or email us at support@blackboxco.com.au. Alternatively, you can book a free consult, and we’ll answer any questions you have.