Tech on Farm | Ep 20

You both mentioned it, but it seems to me that it's critical to upscale and support your staff with any new tech and systems on your farm.

How have you guys supported your staff to understand and use the new technology?

We usually get a summer student in, some temporary workers in, so to support them using an app like Resolution, for example, in the drenching race would have a wee poster.

next to the drenching race and that'll walk them through how to record drenching animals like what they got drenched how many the weight of them and dosage etc but there is a wee bit of manual handling with it but with those younger employees you've sort of got to start somewhere you do that once and you just say look here this is what you do and as long as they actually use the technology that's probably the biggest challenge is to get them to get in that frame of mind of actually using it all the time.

So the information's going in and they're not waiting till the end of the day or the end of the week to put in what they've done.

Really,

Nick, the uptake, I think, from staff can be quite a challenge.

We're a little bit slow sometimes.

Probably for my guys, it's more of a, what's he done now? What's he created now? Or there's something else that he wants done.

But I think there's a lot of technology out there.

We keep getting more and more, but we almost need to try and consolidate a bit of it.

So it's kind of just there.

It's all accessible.

It's kind of one.

We just end up with apps everywhere and apps for everything.

We'll try and sit down when we do our staff meetings and something might have changed or I might have removed a few things from that website or inspection forms, just trying to make things a bit easier for everyone.

We'll discuss it and go through it.

There's always something that comes up or doesn't work or someone's wanting to get rid of or wanting to know a bit more about.

So,

yeah.

carrying on from that Craig with all the apps and the tech that is coming I do feel like I'm going to be obsolete in 10 years I only feel that way because well both Craig and I have started at the bottom with the nuts and bolts of it if you've got a younger one coming in and they see all this tech they're not going to understand all the real nuts and bolts stuff of grass and cows potentially For example, and I've definitely stolen this quote from somebody and they'll know who it is if they listen to this, but a halter collar isn't going to make your cows bigger or grow faster.

You've got to be able to use it correctly.

And making all the tech that is coming through too complicated for someone coming into the industry, you could run into trouble.

But understanding the nuts and bolts before you get into it is still crucial.

I think that's where we just need to try and keep it simple.