The results are staggering. Up to 30% higher revenues. Lower operational expenses. Healthier animals. Higher quality meat. Traceability all the way to the consumer.

Livestock precision farming is poised to become the next big thing for livestock farmers. But what is livestock precision farming?

To explain what it entails, let's take a look at professional sports. The days that managers merely coached players based on their wits are over. Football players are measured on distance covered and the speed of shots at the goal. The heartbeat of a cyclist is measured continuously, ensuring enough reserves are left for the remaining distance. Possibly the summit of data availability per individual contestant is provided by Formula One racing. An orgy of non-obtrusive technology tells a team of analysts everything.

Technology has entered sports, as it has entered many parts of life. Similar technology is now entering livestock farming. For example, Litams menu-driven Handheld Connected Reader (or HCR) is a very easy-to-use tool. It helps farmers to record any characteristic of an animal, like pedigree, birth date, weight, growth, health and much more. Best of all, the farmer does not need to work with a PC. The Litams tools are designed for ease of use, hence the company's motto: "Bleep...Bleep, Ready!".

Another key technology component is EID. The electronic ear tag provides animal with a unique number, which is made available to the HCR, error-free, in a fraction of a second. The farmer merely selects what attributes he wants to record. Take weighing. The animals walk over the scales. The HCR picks up the unique number and adds the weight, time and date to it. These data are immediately added to a database, via mobile internet. The database is located "in the cloud", which is a popular way of saying that a specialized computing centre processes the data for you and stores them, securely and safe, including back up.

Livestock precision farming goes beyond the farm. When the animal arrives at the abattoir, the Slaughterhouse Registration System (SRS) reads the unique number and adds the carcass weight to it. That information is fed back to the farmer. Now, the circle is closed: of each animal, information from heat to meat is available.