Beef & Sheep
Beef & Sheep: For Farmers
What Beef & Sheep changes for the person actually doing the work.
For the person running the business, the test of any farm software is whether it removes work or adds it. Beef and sheep businesses derive a large share of income from support and increasingly from environmental schemes, which makes performance recording and scheme compliance equally important. This module handles suckler and finishing systems, flock management through tupping, scanning and lambing, and the scheme conditionalities that now attach to livestock payments in each nation.
In their words
What the job actually looks like
These are not marketing personas. Each one is a distinct job with a distinct constraint, and the module is designed so that solving one does not create work for the others.
Upland sheep farmer, Wales
Hill flock and SFS entrant
Needs scheme income and flock performance in one view.
- Register stock and set the production calendar
- Condition score and manage nutrition to target
- Breed, scan and group
- Calve or lamb with full recording
Suckler herd manager, Northern Ireland
Beef Carbon Reduction Scheme participant
Needs slaughter age tracked animal by animal.
- Condition score and manage nutrition to target
- Breed, scan and group
- Calve or lamb with full recording
- Grow and finish to specification
Beef finisher
Bought-in stores
Needs cost of gain and grid performance to decide what to buy.
- Breed, scan and group
- Calve or lamb with full recording
- Grow and finish to specification
- Market and capture carcase feedback
End to end
How Beef & Sheep runs, start to finish
The module is modelled as a state machine, so at any point the business knows exactly which stage every record is at and what has to happen next.
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1
Register stock and set the production calendar
This is where the record starts, and getting it right here removes work at every later stage.
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2
Condition score and manage nutrition to target
The platform prompts only for what this stage genuinely needs, and carries everything forward.
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3
Breed, scan and group
Conflicts with scheme rules, regulatory windows and existing commitments are flagged here rather than discovered later.
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4
Calve or lamb with full recording
Capture works offline, so this stage is completed in the field rather than remembered afterwards.
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5
Grow and finish to specification
Everything recorded at this point becomes evidence automatically, in every format that will later ask for it.
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6
Market and capture carcase feedback
This is the stage most businesses currently do twice, once for the operation and once for the paperwork.
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7
Reconcile margin per head and per hectare
Results feed the whole-farm view, so the effect of this stage is visible against the rest of the business.
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8
Claim and evidence livestock scheme payments
The cycle closes here, and what is learned is carried into next season's plan rather than lost.
Capabilities
What Beef & Sheep does
Every capability below is built on the same underlying record, so entering something once is enough for it to appear wherever it is needed.
Record and plan
- Suckler herd management with calving, weaning and replacement policy
- Finishing system performance with daily liveweight gain and cost of gain
- Flock management through tupping, scanning, lambing and weaning
Operate and monitor
- Body condition scoring at the critical points in the production cycle
- Scanning results by ewe with feeding group allocation
- Lambing record with assistance, mortality and cause analysis
Comply and evidence
- Deadweight and liveweight marketing with grid and specification tracking
- Beef Carbon Reduction Scheme age eligibility tracking where applicable
- Estimated Breeding Value recording and selection decision support
Analyse and improve
- Store and finishing purchase appraisal with margin projection
- Upland and hill flock management including hefting and common grazing
- Carcase feedback capture with conformation, fat class and weight
Traceability
The chain behind one batch
Livestock traceability is statutory, the reporting window is short, and it runs through a different national system in each nation. The record is assembled as the animal moves rather than reconstructed at audit.
BATCH-6A106A
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Born on holding
- Who
- Holding of birth
- Evidence
- Ear tag applied and registered
- Held in
- British Cattle Movement Service
-
Health intervention
- Who
- Veterinary practice
- Evidence
- Medicine record with withdrawal period
- Held in
- Medicine book
-
Moved
- Who
- Haulier
- Evidence
- Statutory movement report within the reporting window
- Held in
- British Cattle Movement Service
-
Received
- Who
- Destination holding
- Evidence
- Arrival recorded, standstill applied
- Held in
- Holding register
-
Slaughtered
- Who
- Approved abattoir
- Evidence
- Kill sheet, classification and food chain information
- Held in
- FSA
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Sold
- Who
- Buyer
- Evidence
- Batch linked to the carcase and the holding of origin
- Held in
- Platform record
Take the record with you
Worked example
How a business like yours would use Beef & Sheep
The problem: Needs scheme income and flock performance in one view.
What they do
- Register stock and set the production calendar
- Condition score and manage nutrition to target
- Breed, scan and group
- Calve or lamb with full recording
What changes
- Daily liveweight gain
- Cost of gain per kilogram
- Lambs reared per ewe put to the ram
This is an illustrative worked example built from the module design, not a customer reference. Named case studies are published only with the business's written consent.
What we are hearing
The problems people describe to us
These are composite statements drawn from user research conversations, not attributed customer quotes. We publish named references only with written consent.
I am not short of software. I am short of one place where the same field means the same thing in all of it.
The scheme closed on a Tuesday evening. I had the application half built. Nobody told me the budget was nearly gone.
We farm on both sides of the border. Everything takes twice as long and I still cannot see the whole position on one screen.
Audit week costs me three days. Every single record they ask for is already written down somewhere on this farm.
Measurement
How you will know it is working
The module reports against these measures from the day it is switched on, so the value is demonstrable rather than assumed.
- 01Daily liveweight gain
- 02Cost of gain per kilogram
- 03Lambs reared per ewe put to the ram
- 04Calves weaned per cow
- 05Percentage in specification
- 06Gross margin per hectare
Free tool
Run the numbers for your own holding
Enter your figures and get an answer you can act on, with the method shown so you can check it. Save the result to your account or take it away as a PDF.