We just finished counting our tenth feedyard. We’ve counted more than 700,000 head of cattle to date … and we’re still counting, of course!
This yard, located in the heart of Texas cattle country, had nearly 75,000 head of cattle. It took us fewer than 24 hours to get an accurate count of the cattle in each pen.
How did we do it?
First an FAA-licensed drone pilot visited the feedyard and shot aerial photos of each of the 600 or so pens. He uploaded these photos to us through our secure transfer site, and we ran them through our CattleQuantsTM software. Our software counts cattle at a rate of roughly 1000 head per minute.
The problem is that it’s not always perfect. Sometimes it thinks that a mound of mud is a cow. Other times one cow is standing over another cow, and our software can’t differentiate them.
That’s when our Image Analysts stepped in. They verified the count for each pen, fixing any mistakes and ensuring that the accuracy is 99.9% or more. They also made sure that the software didn’t count any cattle in neighboring pens by mistake.
Finally, a pdf report was auto generated and sent to the client. Actually, our client gave us their yardsheet, with all their expected totals for each feedyard pen. So we were able to highlight any discrepancies between the true count and the yardsheet.
“Will you do it again?” we asked the manager of one of these feedyards. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “And instead of yearly, I’ll do it twice a year. And if you could guarantee turnaround time within 24 hours, I would do it monthly.” Well, we can now guarantee 24 hour turnaround in most cases.
Whether it’s for an annual accounting, a sales transaction, or a compulsory audit, CattleQuantsTM cattle counting is as easy as it is accurate. There’s no disruption to normal operations, and no disturbance to the cattle.
Interested in counting cattle the CattleQuantsTM way? Contact us today to get a personalized pricing proposal. In any case, we’ll let you know once we’ve counted a million head!