Company Uses Scanning to Sort Cattle into Load Lots

by Christy Van Zant

Cattle are not created equal, which is nothing new to cattle producers and feedlot managers.

Performance Cattle Scanning, Inc. (PCS) of Broken Bow, Nebraska, has developed a system that will provide load lots of cattle that will look and feed like they were created equal.

PCSs' vision is to work with the auction and sale barns to be able to accurately and automatically put together uniform load lots of cattle.

Dr. Don V. Cain, Jr., D.V.M., M. S. has developed the performance cattle system. "The Musculo-Skeletal Imaging Scanner (MSI) is a high speed video scanner that evaluates and classifies cattle according to their shape." said Dr. Cain. The scanning process starts by bringing the cattle to the scanner and moving them through the processing chute. As animals walk through the scanner their shape is captured with a top and side video camera. Their weight is also captured. The MSI scanner uses the shape and weight information to score the animal and compare it to its database.

"Sorting is the most economically proven management tool you can do," said Dr.Cain. "We can track your cattle from the auction barn all the way to the packing plant," said Dr.Cain. The limiting factor in sorting cattle has always been who is doing it and how is it being done. "With our system the computer sorts the cattle objectively and we can sort them at a rate of 150 to 180 per hour," said Cain.

PCS has three ways they sort cattle. They use breed sorting, weight sorting or biological type. PCS has found the biological type sorting to work the best. "Every rancher has a few head of cattle that are on the extremes of both ends, they end up getting sorted at the sale barn anyway," said Cain. "This system has the beauty of actually bringing the industry larger groups of cattle that can be managed better for their own performance. And the feedyard gets benefits, because they have a more uniform group," said Cain.

Research from Bio-Sort Systems and PCS has shown that in the sorted cattle, health improves, death loss and medicine per head is decreased and sorted cattle produce lower yield grade 3s, 4s and 5s. Average daily gain is higher as the PCS system can predict project- ed slaughter weight, thus the feedyard is not over or under feeding their cattle.