Weighbridge cuts stock stress

It is proving safer for those working with livestock given that no direct human-animal contact is needed, and the improved yard design is less stressful for stock and allowing time-efficiencies.

The $750,000 project completed in late July is the second phase of the $6-million redevelopment of the yards which has already seen a roof put over all cattle selling pens.

Staff now operate pneumatic holding gates and the gates to the weigh bridge with remote controls.

A bridge around the perimeter of the forcing pens ensures no staff or agents are in the same pen as cattle, and can be moved from overhead. Nearly all of the weighbridge is undercover with the new roof.

Naracoorte Lucindale director of planning, environment and community development Steve Bourne said the weighbridge and associated pen upgrade was all part of the council's mission to make the Naracoorte Regional Livestock Exchange SA's premier livestock selling centre.

"We want to maximise the numbers through the yards and buyer competition," Mr Bourne said.

"The yards are such a large economic driver for Naracoorte for the agents, producers and the town in general. Naracoorte is much busier on sale days than non-sale days."

The weighbridge project received a $200,000 state government grant from the Regional Development Infrastructure Fund.

The contract for the new weighbridge was let out to Adelaide-based company Fusco which subcontracted all the steel work to local engineering company Chris Haynes Engineering. The steel is all hot dip galvanised.

GT Industrial Sales supplied the pneumatic gates on each of the pens and the electronics were supplied by Festo.

NLRE manager Richard James said the new weighbridge allowed bigger lines to be weighed, speeding up the whole process.

Each lot of up to 30 cattle is on the weighbridge for only about a minute.

"The old weighbridge was only capable or weighing up to 10 tonnes so we could not fit a whole pen and had to weigh part pens but we have now recalibrated it to handle 15 tonnes with an accuracy still of 2.5 kilograms," Mr James said.

"It has really sped up the process."

Another advantage of the reconfiguration is the ALEIS high-flow multi-reader scanner to read the NLIS tags located in the lead up to the scales rather than scanned after weighing. Any lost or unreadable tags can be detected before leaving the weighbridge.

In what is believed to be a Australian first for regional saleyards, agents and producers will soon be able to monitor the weighbridge remotely from the canteen a few hundred metres away.

Two monitors mounted on the canteen wall will stream video footage of cattle entering the weighbridge. A screen showing their weights will soon be operational.

"There have been a few teething problems with the pneumatic gates but we are getting there now and everything is flowing smoothly," Mr James said.

* Full report in Stock Journal, January 30, 2014 issue.