The Beefie team has conducted more than 5,000 cattle-weighing tests with its app and concluded a 95% accuracy rate. After debuting in a few markets over the summer, it’s now expanding to include Greece, Germany, France, South Africa, Australia, New-Zealand, Brazil and the US.
The technology aims to be a solution for the “risky, costly and difficult procedure of weighing cattle,” according to Beefie. Typical methods are stressful and occasionally harmful for both cattle farmers and their livestock.
But the Beefie app eliminates this stress by keeping everything contained to a smartphone. Farmers simply have to photograph each individual animal. Results are delivered in less than a half minute without touching the animal or doing any special preparation.
“The technology uses an external device combined with photographs captured from 2-6 meters distance with standard Android 5.1+ smartphone systems,” Beefie said.
It accounts for condition, breed, gender, age and general appearance of the animal based on user input, creating an entry with the animal’s individual ID number and photograph. It even works when the cattle are in motion or partially obscured.
Beefie provides clear-cut instructions for capturing the best photo, such as: “Make a sideview photo of the cattle. Stand as perpendicular as possible, hold the phone straight. 2-6 meters will do. It takes about 10 seconds, and 10 pictures will be taken. During the process, keep the phone perpendicular to the animal.”
“Ten photos will be taken and beefie gives you the choice to select the right photo for the measurement. Select the most perpendicular photo. The photo must be sharp and clean, the animal's chest clearly visible.”
Gergely Boromisza, co-founder of Beefie, said “After thousands of tests, I’m confident to say that we are ready to satisfy the demand of hundreds if not thousands of farmers. Most of the products ordered in the pre-sales period are already in the hands of farmers, but we are working on building a global reseller network to help farmers everywhere.”
Beefie currently runs on Android devices 5.0 or newer with camera and OTG support.