Why is weighing your cattle important? In this episode of the Casual Cattle Conversations, Shaye interviews Dawn Anderson from the CattleScales team about why weighing cattle is valuable and how different scale options fit different ranch setups. Dawn shares her family’s ranch background and explains how their weighing systems evolved from beam and hanging scales to load bars and chute-side scale heads.
They discuss how accurate weights improve confidence in breeding and culling decisions, reveal herd consistency, guide feed testing and ration changes, track average daily gain, help market seedstock and finished cattle, and ensure proper medication dosing. Dawn emphasizes that scales are an investment, there are portable and stationary options, and ranchers can call to match a system to their goals. Learn more at https://bit.ly/4dqqTtr.
Links and Resources
Learn more about Cargill here: https://bit.ly/4e1qygS
Catch more conversations like this one and learn more at https://www.casualcattleconversations.com/
00:00 Why Weigh Cattle
02:01 Meet Dawn Anderson
05:16 Scale Evolution on the Ranch
08:56 Better Data Better Decisions
12:56 Backgrounding and ADG Tracking
14:22 Cow Performance and Culling
17:18 Accurate Treatment Dosage
20:39 Feeding and Pen Decisions
22:24 Marketing With Confidence
26:33 Choosing the Right Scale