Platform that was used only in confinement now automates the rearing and rearing phases of the animals, ensuring total control of nutrition from gestation to the moment of slaughter
Bovitrato, a company created from the partnership between FMX and Seys, added new modules to its cattle confinement management solution. From now on, the platform also makes it possible to control and automate the feeding of animals during the rearing and rearing phases, in addition to providing traceability.
With the update, the application, which was developed using the GeneXus Low-Code platform, a company belonging to Globant and leader in this type of software, now allows the user to manage costs and automate the entire cattle handling chain . This process involves the calf phase, which goes from the cow's pregnancy to the birth of the calf and rearing, the animal's growth period until the confinement or fattening stage. Through the solution, the zootechnician is able to determine and parameterize the entire nutrition plan in the software, which sends the planned production orders for loading and unloading operations in feed mixers, either in vehicles (trucks and tractors) or in static mixers . The scale, embedded in the mixers, selects the necessary ingredients and prepares the diet, which can be individual or directed to batches of cattle.
To ensure complete automation in these stages, the Bovitrato system is interconnected to a mechanism composed of a wireless weighing module (MPSF) that connects to the load cells of the equipment, sending weighing readings to the application. This, in turn, registers and manages the loading data. The solution also has a Remote Display that allows the loader to connect to any of the production equipment, and thus be able to accurately dose the inputs. For this, long-range transmitters are used to allow communication between equipment.
That way, only one zootechnician is needed to assemble the cattle diet, along with a professional responsible for driving the truck and taking the treatment to the corrals. This results in a reduction of 5 to 10% in labor and 0.6 % in savings of inputs spent during the feeding processes, as the distributed weight is closer to the planned one. In practice, this automation represents savings of approximately R＄60,000 for a farm that confines 9,000 head of cattle per cycle.
In addition, the application allows the user to manage the entire diet of the cattle, ensuring total control of nutrition from the cow's pregnancy until the moment the animal goes to the slaughterhouse. This is possible, because as the cattle are fed, through the production orders, the values loaded for each ingredient for the individual treatment are registered in the system, creating a history of each animal. With the registration, producers now have precise control of expenses with animal nutrition, knowing exactly the amount and cost of the diet, which allows the reduction of human errors when performing calculations related to expenses and the amount of inputs used in the processes. It is also worth mentioning that the inputs represent 70% of the cost of a confinement.
In addition to all the automation and control of the tract through native integration between hardware and software, Bovitrato also has sanitary control, trough and animal management, feed factory control, cost management and analysis of sales results.
For the partner-owner of Bovitrato, Marcela Coutinho, the livestock market in Brazil still has a significant delay in terms of digitization, since most processes are conducted manually. “With the objective of contributing to the modernization of the sector, we decided to update our platform and allow the automation and digitalization of other processes in the handling of cattle”, he explains.
Currently, 60 producers use the application, which can be sold in modules depending on the user's needs. The goal is to double the number of supporters to the system in up to one year. Customers can choose to purchase just the containment management system or choose the complete package, which includes automation software. In addition, the producer has the option of buying specific modules for the rearing, rearing or fattening phases, thus adapting to the specific production carried out on his farm.
“The automation of cattle handling with Low-Code brings productivity gains and independence in technological updating. In this sense, GeneXus allows the constant change of the platform, ensuring that the market and the livestock sector can evolve and efficiently meet the needs of rural producers”, adds the country manager of GeneXus in Brazil, Portugal and Cape Verde, Ricardo Recchi.
