Smart Paddock picks up the rising star award
A Saskatchewan company that makes monitoring technology for beef producers and outdoor use won the Business of the Year and Most Innovative categories at Canadian Western Agribition’s Livestock Ag Tech Awards.
Farm Simple, owned by Katlin Lange, continues to build sensor technology uses for Prairie conditions. The company started out making a system that monitored water levels for remote pastures but has expanded options for its monitor, adding water temperatures, pressures, flows and water quality in terms of total dissolved solids.
He says farmers continue to suggest new parameters to monitor to help save them time and gather more data.
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An Australian company with a Canadian connection, Smart Paddock, won the Rising Star category at Agribition.
Smart Paddock’s founder and chief executive officer, Darren Wolchyn, moved his family from Alberta to Australia and ended up working on GPS-tracking golf carts. Ranching friends in Alberta suggested he help them GPS track cattle, and the company was born.
The technology’s target market is cattle on the range or in remote locations and uses solar-powered ear tags installed on the back of a cow’s ear to keep track of them.
Ranchers usually start with tracking their valuable bulls, but other uses include tracking herd movement and where the cattle have grazed. It can also be used to predict calving and identify potential problems, such as access to water.
Two other companies were also in the competition:
Opend Range makes custom ramps that ride on a cattle transport trailer so that no on-site ramp is needed. That’s especially a benefit for remote pastures.
Flokk is an Alberta company that provides a robust data recorder for beef farms meant to be used outdoors and at chutes and software to record management and traceability data.
