Ideas, News, Information, Stories & Opinions

Fall is in the air and that means two things: ranch activities increase and Tru-Test Fall scale promotions. This season, Tru-Test has some great promotions for those looking at portable/alley installations as well as permanent installations.

Not sure if you are ready for scales? Visit with one of our scale experts who can help discuss your situation and offer recommendations to help you reach your management goals.

This newsletter includes:

How to save up to $500 on Tru-Test scales
Meet The Cattle Scales experts
Choosing the right scale indicator
Taking your weighing to the next step with Cattle
Increasing weighing efficiencies with electronic ID
Save up to $500 this fall on Tru-Test Scales

Tru-Test has announced some great promotions for the Fall. Last season's promotions only applied to portable/alley installations, leaving those needing permanent installations out of luck. Great news - this season's promotions benefit everyone!

This Fall's Promotions include:

Up to $280 INSTANT rebate on platform purchase when bought with load bars and an indicator
Up to $300 mail-in rebate on scale indicators
Up to $500 mail-in rebate when purchasing a scale indicator and EID reader
And a bonus exclusive to all scale indicator purchases include $100 credit towards 

View the complete details about the Tru-Test Scale Promotions

Meet Your Cattle Scales Experts

Unlike many online retailers and feed stores who carry a phone book's worth of a product catalog, The Cattle Scales focuses excluslively on Tru-Test weigh scales and electronic ID readers.

Our team members are ranchers just like you. We can help you find the right scale system by discussing your needs asking questions, and making recommendations.

A cattle scale system is not just a piece of livestock equipment, but it's also a piece of technology. Given the investment you are making in scales, it is important to ensure that you are getting the right scale system to accomplish your goals.

Contact our cattle scale experts today

Choosing the right scale indicator

The indicator (often called the display or readout) is really the "brains" of a cattle weighing system. The indicator receives the weight from the load bars and displays it on screen. Some models also store weights and animal IDs. Here's a quick description of the indicator models:

EziWeigh5i: Entry level weigh scale - simply displays the weight.

EziWeigh7i: Ideal for basic weighing with Electronic ID reader integration and downloading IDs and weights into a spreadsheet for importing in to cattle software or analysis in Excel.

ID5000: Popular choice for performance oriented needs since all of the animal's weights are shown right on the large display screen. Also includes EID reader compatibility and downloading internal memory.

XR5000: Advanced indicator allows for tracking animal life data and 100 custom fields per animal. A good fit for those looking to store everything on their indicator.

View a comparison of the Tru-Test scale indicators

Collecting weights on cattle without a plan for analyzing these weights limits the management opportunities you have with your cattle.

It's hard to make breeding and heifer selection decisions without knowing how a cow's past calves have compared to the herd or how a heifer ranked relative to her contemporaries. It's hard to know which direction your herd is going in without analysis of calf weaning weights.

Organize your cattle records in one place - No more shoe boxes to spill, slips of papers to lose, or notebooks to get damaged from the elements.
Save time managing your herd - Common tasks such as pasture movement, pasture exposure breeding, and medical treatments can be entered once and applied to a group of cattle. The Calving screen makes calving season easy by pre-filling in information from the dam's breeding records and current location.
Improve decision making - Imported weights are used to calculate ADG, WDA, adjusted weights, contemporary groups, and more. Reports provide you with a birds-eye view of how your cattle are performing, both on an individual level and a herd level.
A few helpful links

Increasing weighing efficiencies with electronic ID

A growing number of producers are using electronic identification (EID tags) to collect data and help with animal identification and management.

EID tags are ideal for processing cattle in the chute while visual tags help for easy identification while in the field. To facilitate this, producers use a match pair set of tags, which includes an electronic id tag and corresponding visual/ear tag with the EID number printed along with a management/tag number of the producer's choice.

No need to key in an animal's ear tag when you can scan the EID tag! EID-compatible models of Tru-Test scale indicators allow for seamless working - scan an animal's EID tag, the EID number is sent to the scale indicator, record the weight on the scale and the weight is associated with that EID tag.

Questions on electronic identification or simply need to order ear tags for the Fall?