🇦🇺 Tom Bucknell: Better Farm Planning with AgriWebb

Farms and ranches have to make the most of their staff’s time. Tom and Michael from Wirrabilla Farms in New South Wales discuss how the farm management tools in AgriWebb have allowed them to plan better, share data and accomplish more using technology.

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[Tom Bucknell]

I’m Tom Bucknell with Wirribilla Farms, it’s a mixed grazing enterprise consisting of—in a usual year—probably about 61,000 AOC.

[Michael Campbell]

I’m Michael Campbell. I work for Wirribilla Farms as a Manager. Wirribilla is a 5,000 hectare mixed grazing enterprise. In a good season we have excess feed, but basically we’re considered a meat factory producing 8,000 to 10,000 fat lambs a year.

[Tom Bucknell]

Here on Wirrabilla we have two stockmen a year, a mechanic and a manager.

[Michael Campbell]

We started using AgriWebb in 2016 and it was to try and fill a gap with the staff that we had. So all the staff knew where all the stock were at any time. Currently we use AgriWebb mainly for its livestock locations.  It allows the staff to know where they are. The gate opening adaptation they’ve incorporated in the last couple of years has allowed the staff to know which paddocks are joined together or not. The tasks we’ve been using in the last 12 months a lot more, especially with the drought and feeding. We have ongoing tasks, so feeding hay, feeding grain that’s updated every week…sometimes a couple of times a week.

[Tom Bucknell]

AgriWebb has improved our efficiency more than anything…looking at numbers…all your tasks…the history of animals; it’s all visible for everyone. AgriWebb has definitely improved our staff management here at Wirribilla, in terms of directing traffic. If we’ve got a new guy coming in or a mechanic who doesn’t usually handle stock, it’s easy for him to get up the map and see where gates are open; where mobs are what’s meant to be in that mob. It’s really improved the staff management.

[Michael Campbell]

Prior to AgriWebb, we would have had a written down list of where everything is and we would basically do a ‘take five’ to inform the staff where the stock are, the best way of mastering the stock and where the yards are. The time that we’re saving using AgriWebb has been utilized in other ways. The staff are able to do other jobs with the time that we wouldn’t have had time to address. If tasks aren’t done, they were added to the task list everywhere.

AgriWebb has been quite good with support from the initial setup. They offered to do that for us, so the actual work of setting up…this is a sizeable property–196 paddocks–so it’s quite a bit of work With the live contacts you can just type in your question and they get back to you; generally in 10 minutes  to my experience.

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For the full transcript please watch the video on our website with captions on. You can also learn more about farm planning and record keeping on the features page.