Latest / Got Any Cows? / 56. Remote monitoring of cattle location, health, estrus and calving w/ Scott Holt of 701x

Transcript

56. Remote monitoring of cattle location, health, estrus and calving w/ Scott Holt of 701x · Got Any Cows?

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Got Any Cows Podcast.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn all you can about the beef cattle industry, this is the podcast for you.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: My name is Seth Christensen.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: My company has sent beef cattle genetics to 45 of the 50 states and 12 countries around the world.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: I've had the chance to learn from some of the best and brightest in the beef cattle industry, and I invite you to join me for those conversations here on the Got Any Cows Podcast.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting here with Scott Holt of 701X.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Scott, I appreciate you coming down today out of Caldwell.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Made the trip down here to Western Idaho to be with us.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And if you would, Scott, give us a quick intro on who you are and where you come from.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: So Scott Holt, I'm the strategic accounts manager for 701x, based in Fargo, North Dakota.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: Grew up in western Washington, got a love of agriculture from my best friend's family's farm, the Mapleview Farm.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: And they did dairy, beef, diversified crops, still do today.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: And that led me to a path in agriculture.
1:09
SPEAKER_02: And I've been fortunate enough to do a number of different things really tied around purebred livestock management, marketing, those kinds of things.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: And for the last 25 years, I've been an animal ID guy.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: So really focusing on helping producers use animal ID as tools to make their lives easier, make their records more accurate, and really develop their cattle in ways that they maybe couldn't do before without the sophisticated ID that we have today.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha, gotcha.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: So your role within 701x, what do you do for 701x at this point?
1:46
SPEAKER_02: So I do a little bit of everything for 701x.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: My primary role is this official title of strategic accounts manager.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: So sales to strategic accounts, so bigger uh CalCAF producers and Sea Stock producers would be my main role.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: But I do some product management work and I do some uh work with our account executive team that really supports us in the field, uh, help on the marketing side with our marketing group as well.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh so they uh use my skills in the business for a number of things.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: Um, but my my main focus is developing um sales and support of those sales.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: So for anyone that's unfamiliar, walk us through what 701x is.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: What is 701x as a company?
2:34
SPEAKER_00: What products do you offer?
2:36
SPEAKER_00: And we'll get in depth into all these different components of the products and walk through all of that.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: But for somebody looking for a 30,000-foot view, what is 701x and what do you offer?
2:46
SPEAKER_02: So we are a technology company that was started in Fargo by a gentleman who's got great vision in the cattle business and with making things.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: And so Kevin looked at the market and saw that there was not a single company that made monitoring devices and software to support them.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: So he started down that path.
3:08
SPEAKER_02: So today we have two monitoring products.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh we have a herd management program that supports those monitoring products, and then we do registry services, and then we have some ancillary devices that kind of help with all three of those buckets.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: But those are the three main buckets of what we do.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: 701 is the area code for North Dakota.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: So that's uh that's the tie-in to who we are and what we do.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, fantastic.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: So if you would well go ahead, Scott, and walk me through what brought you to 701x.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: What made you decide, hey, this is a company I want to be a part of.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: How did you land with 701x?
3:46
SPEAKER_02: So I was uh between gigs last summer, um, kind of was part of a of a corporate downsize, and so I looked at a lot of different pieces and parts of the puzzle.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh obviously, I'd been in the ID business, uh, been tied into the pharma business to some degree, tied into the breed association business to some degree in my earlier career, and kind of looked in all those directions.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: And then actually, a friend of a friend said, Hey, you might call Scott.
4:16
SPEAKER_02: He would have some ability to help out what you guys are doing.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: So I got a call from an employee of 701x who had been a customer of mine, and he's like, Hey, what do you want to do?
4:29
SPEAKER_02: And we had a visit about that, and he's like, How fast can you make it to Fargo?
4:33
SPEAKER_02: And uh I went up there, and quite frankly, the products were interesting to me, the people were more interesting.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: Uh, very strong background in engineering in our in our place of business.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: Not a lot of cow guys that had the ability to give them feedback of what was working and what wasn't working in the field, and so I just felt like it was a really good fit for me uh to bring my knowledge to the table of the business in general and really be able to take their products to the next level for them.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: You bet.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: And I first started into 701x and started to interact with the company, it'd be last fall, so right about a year ago, this time, fall of 25.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: The struggle that we had run into is like you and I had been talking before we recorded, we fall calve and we calve out on pasture.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: And so the thing we're looking at here is the benefits of fall calving are I mean, we're we're in good weather, we're out of the pens, we're calving out in the pasture.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: There's all these good things about it, there's reasons we do it.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: The downside of fall calving is that that cow can be stuck in a pen that the calf has gone out of.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: If the calf finds a way out and the cow can't follow, a cow can track down a calf anywhere.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: A calf can't track down a cow within 20 yards of it.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And so we start running into this risk of a split pair, of a cow losing track of a baby, and a brand new baby can starve to death 20 yards outside of a pen because it can't get to its mother, doesn't know where to look, doesn't know where to go, and we can't fight it, find it.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: You want to talk master of hide and seek.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these babies are impossible to find if they don't want to be found.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: So that's what brought me to that XT Lite product specifically.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: I started looking for, I wanted a Bluetooth tag.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my my thought was I mean, I wanted air tags in all my babies and all these calves, was the thought.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And as I started researching that or looking for products that would accomplish that for me as far as how do I keep track of these babies that are worth so much that can become lost.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I came in contact with the XT Lite product.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: So we went ahead and put that in for the first time this last fall.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: So for somebody that's unfamiliar, Scott, walk us through what is an XT light tag and what are maybe some other applications in addition to a brand new baby trying to keep a pair from splitting, like we did when we jumped in with the XT Lite product.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: And and just kind of a 20,000-foot overview of what we're trying to do.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: We're trying to provide tools for producers to make their jobs easier and to spread out their workload.
6:59
SPEAKER_02: So if you can look at an app on your phone and see if if your cattle are okay and you don't have to race out there and and do an inventory on every pen or check every calf, then then your time is freed up for the ones who need help or for the other tasks that you have to do for the day.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: So that's really the vision of 701x.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: And and one of the things that that I'm extremely proud of is that as the cow guy, I'm trying to always outsmart the engineering guys.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, what I have learned is that they have thought of a lot of things that most people don't, especially guys who aren't cattle guys.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: And so what's been fun for me is to share some information with them, both pluses and minuses, because a lot of times I'll be like, I got one on them today.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: And they're like, Yeah, we looked at that like six months ago.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: And so end of day, there's never a stopping point.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: There's always forward thinking, there's always a need for customer feedback, whether it's from the customers directly or us in the field.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and uh that's been fun to help develop these products.
8:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: So our pro tag we'll talk about later, that's really our flagship product.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Our light tag is a tag that I have really gotten excited about this summer on some trips with Kevin Bifford, our founder, who is super high energy guy.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: And if if you have the opportunity to meet him, you'll figure out real fast why he's successful and why this company has been successful.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, basically it's a product that that pings a Bluetooth beacon.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: Either that Bluetooth beacon pings to our Pro tag, which is our flagship tag, or to what we call an X Watson, which is a base station or a a downloading device, uh stationary antenna, basically.
8:54
SPEAKER_02: And so what you get is uh a four-day benchmark.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh when you started, it would have been a seven-day.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: Today it's a four-day, and after four days, we kind of know what that calf is doing.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: And so if it's outside of its normal activity, you're gonna get a health alert.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Comes right to your phone, and you can look down and see that whatever tag number you gave that.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: So obviously we have a device number that's not very convenient for a rancher, sure.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: But 357 is.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: And so you go out and look at that that calf, and you may not even see a sign of sickness, right?
9:30
SPEAKER_02: But something's off.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: And so what we tell folks to do is, hey, doctor those cattle.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, you don't have to give them any max dose of any kind, kind of half dose them that something's coming on, and uh it's prior to them getting a fever, so the the activity lessens, their head placement goes down, they're a little more lethargic, and you can get a jump start on these calves.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: If we're just talking a commercial calf, twenty four hundred bucks they're worth today, um and then seed stock, that's where they start and go up from there.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: So an investment in a$20 ear tag is not very hard to pay back on those cattle.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: Um the the bigger thing that I see, especially for our purebred customers, and in your world where you're doing ETs, etc., is the fact that you're gonna get on that calf and get it treated before it really gets sick.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: And so that calf isn't going to lose value.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: And to me, that was really driven home at a couple of purebred production folks this summer we were at, and the light came on for me that hey, they're not trying to save a calf, they're trying to make sure that that calf is still, you know, in the top end of their bull sail.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: And so by being able to find out extra early, basically two days before a visual sign of sickness, that there's something going wrong here, that is highly valuable.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: And it it does two things.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: It helps you as a producer find a problem, but it also lessens your load that that calf isn't going to get real sick and be three, four days of effort and expense to get back a little bit of product and off you go.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep, yep.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And I mean a calf that's treated early is a calf that responds.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, if it's a calf that we don't treat until I mean, because frankly, when it comes to just manually observing cattle, if we have to check every pen every day, a lot of times it's got to be in and out relatively quickly.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't see something that stands out literally from a mile away, as far as it's real dopey, it's really off, it's really lethargic, it may not get treated.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And by that point, that treatment's not gonna be nearly as effective or as efficacious as it would be if we'd done it two days before we could see anything, um, or even just on the front edge of that sickness.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And so getting cattle to respond, a lot of value there, and then not having to worry about, hey, we've got to be in every single pen every day looking for something.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: You can say, no, I've got to ping on exactly these tag numbers in exactly this place.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: I can go focus my time and effort where it's needed, as opposed to saying, hey, I might spend all day long looking at all these pastures that frankly didn't hardly need checked, and I missed the one that needed it anyway, because it wasn't that sick yet.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And so I think a lot of a lot of benefit in being able to monitor them that closely.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And then for us, there was so much benefit just in having a location.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I think about it, I'm like, if we had, if you had, you know, in the case of the these uh seed stock calves, especially, it's not even at all outlandish to say these are$10,000 calves.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: And if I had$10,000 just sitting in a wad of Benjamins, you know, I wouldn't leave that sitting around where like I don't really know for sure where it is, or I'm not positive where it landed, or I don't really know, you know what I mean, where where the location is on that.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, we'd be keeping track of the location, you know, and we we'd want to we'd want to keep track of that.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And that was the biggest benefit that we saw as far as just knowing where the calves were all the time.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: We always knew where they were.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And anytime that a calf did get out of a pen, we didn't have to go wander around and try to play hide and seek.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: We just went ahead and kicked on on the phone there, and and you've got the option to search for a given tag or for a given XT light, and we could wander around and then it would ping once we're within Bluetooth range, it'd ping the phone.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: We say, hey, here's where this baby is, we can go find it.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Because we had, for example, I mean, some of these pastures right next to a cornfield.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, you want to talk about difficult.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, a brand new baby buried somewhere in a cornfield, you will never find them.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, and again, we just do we talk dollars and cents for me as the owner and paying the man hours for one or two people that are trying to comb this cornfield and figure out where in the world this calf went, versus saying, nope, we can walk right along the edge, pings it, it's right here, we'll go grab it and stick it back in.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's real dollars back in my pocket and or things we can get to, important things that need done on the day that we can get done because we're not looking for a calf that can't be found.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, we know where the baby is, we know if it's in, we know if it's out.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: We use the the roll call feature as well to be able to roll through and see, hey, are these babies present?
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Are they not?
14:01
SPEAKER_00: If they're not, where are they?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And let's get them back in.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, so for me, that was the most, I mean, the most direct return immediately on that XT light product was saying I'm not gonna lose track of a calf.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And so that's a huge dollar value to not lose one to a split pair that you're unaware of, and then two just saved labor that we're not spending all this time looking at pastures that don't need to look at and/or looking for a calf that can't be found, short of having this this XT Lite product in.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned the XT Pro, you know, which would be a step above and beyond what the XT Lite is.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: What is an XT Pro tag?
14:36
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll maybe share some of my experiences with deploying those here.
14:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so an XT Pro was the first product that we developed, and and certainly one that has a variety of features.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: So um to start with, it is a solar powered tag.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: So it's got a three-year life, um, has a little solar power on the top of it that charges the battery.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: It communicates through cell or satellite.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: So if you're in an area where there's no cell service, it will all download data through satellite.
15:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh so you can get an exact GPS location of that animal.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you can put the put a fence up on our software and determine if they're outside of that fence or not.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: You get a step count on animals every day.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you certainly get health alerts on those animals every day.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh for bulls, in addition to step counts, you get mounting.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: So you actually know that bulls you've turned out are active and and taking steps and mounting cows.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: For females, uh, we have an estrus feature where you can actually tell that they are coming into estrus, and then calving alerts as we get into calving season.
15:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh and so it's really the full meal deal, uh, the tool that communicates if you get an animal in a trailer, you'll get a high-speed alert.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, that's your trailer and not the neighbor's trailer.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh but it is interesting where for some time you all I'll have my daughter go and pick up a cow, or and I get the alert before she calls and says, Hey dad, I'm good, I'm on the road.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: Um the other day I was actually out of town.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: My wife had to go get a couple pair from a lease pasture 50 miles from home.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: And boom, I get an alert on my phone that these two cows are moving.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, she called me minutes later and said, Hey, I got them, I'm headed for home.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: It was after dark, it was way beyond expectations of anyone's wife to go and and get those cattle out of a pack, cows and calves, out of a pasture, but she did.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, so that was that was cool stuff there.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: The big thing with the pro is that it also is a communication device for the lights.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: So we can link cows and calves, uh, you know, we can do some some um work just with those pairs.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it and they will ping another cow's calf.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: So if a calf gets away from its own mother but near another cow, that cow will ping data and you'll get a uh relative GPS to that cow that's in that same herd.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: Um so it it does kind of double duty, not just its own calf, but a communication device for the others.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, we we've got some tools there to really follow those calves and make sure that they're nursing and make sure they're healthy and and and those types of things.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: So there's added benefits to having cows and calves paired.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: We realize that's not for everybody, but if you have a small herd and you have a job off farm or you just don't want to worry about cattle, if you have your cows tagged and your calves tagged, you just sit and wait for the phone to beep.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: And if it does, you look at it and determine if it's an emergency or not.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you just go about the business of the day and don't worry about your cows.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot to be said for that.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: You talk about just peace of mind, you know, as far as not worrying, like, hey, is something lighting on fire that I'm not aware of or that I don't know, hey, my cows are out, or I don't know it was my neighbor's trailer that they're on, you know, or or I'm unaware this one's sick and I haven't had time to see it because maybe I did get home after dark, right?
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, all those different pieces of just knowing, hey, this is what's going on and it's being monitored all the time.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Way more, even even if you are really on top of it or putting in a lot of time, a lot of effort on your pasture checks, none of us can be out there every 15 minutes with every cow, you know, but this tag can be.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think a really unique component, you know, just to say, hey, we can watch all of them.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And then again, talking about just efficient use of man hours, whether it's your own time or or paid employee time, to say, hey, we're gonna point people where help is needed, rather than saying, well, we're gonna spend all of our time looking for the problem, and or by default, you run out of time and you don't catch the problem anyway.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Or you're in and out so quick you don't see it anyway.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I have noticed with us, we went ahead and we put in those XT pros this spring.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: So the way our deployment timeline worked, last fall, all of the cows were already out.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And so they weren't somewhere really accessible to put these XT pros in.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: So we just put the XT lights in the babies when we went ahead and processed them as they arrived.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: And that let us keep track of the calves location to an extent just using the GPS on the phone.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: It's not as good as doing it with the XT pros, but we were able to track down those babies as needed just with the GPS from the phone.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, so using it, I guess, kind of in a less than ideal scenario, but functional, right?
19:34
SPEAKER_00: It allowed us to use those XT lights.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Whereas this spring, after those cattle had come in, had wintered, had been here, we had them accessible close to a chute.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And so before we turned those cows back out this spring, we went ahead and put in 50 of these XT light tags into us into a subset of our cows.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: And um, since they've been out, it has been a really, really handy.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: A couple of different things that it's done for us, as far as I guess just you know, practical real world experience here on my ranch.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the the out-of-fence alert.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: I way prefer 701X going off and saying, Oh, they're out and they're out of this pen and they're going that way, which translates to I can go find them, get them, get them back in before anybody else is calling saying, hey, they're on the highway, or hey, they're in my yard, or hey, you know what I mean, they've landed somewhere that they they shouldn't be.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, would much rather know the moment they're out which pen they're out of and where they're going.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: So I mean that's been that's been great, and it'll let me know right away on that.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, same deal, like you mentioned, when they're on a trailer.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Luckily, it's never been one they shouldn't be on, but you want to talk about an effective tool.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I look at it and frankly, we're still using 1860s brand law to try to keep track of whose cows are who and where they're at.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And boy, that gets hard if you say, well, my cows were here a week ago when I was in this pasture last, and now they're not, and we're trying to track them down across a tri-state area by a brand, you know what I mean, relative to saying, no, the moment that animal started moving faster than an animal can move, i.e., it's on a trailer, it's moving at highway speeds.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: We know exactly where it went, when it went there, how fast it's going, and you could go find that vehicle and follow it if you so chose.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm not saying that that's luckily we've not had to go play, you know, dog the bounty hunter or anything.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Like we've not been in any high-speed chases, but those animals would not leave and have me not know it, you know, and with the values where they're at, that's worth that's worth knowing, you know, and and worth being aware of.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And and the other one I'd mention as well for us, you know, is is the calving, you know, and and having a heads up on that and knowing, hey, this cow is calved.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And so again, you know, and for us, we calve the bulk of our cows in the fall.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just been a handful of kind of isolated, oddball type cows, some donor cows and things that are kind of calving counter cyclical for us, that a few spring calves.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: So we don't want to be out in them checking all day, all night, over and over again for six weeks because they can go three weeks early, they can go three weeks late.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you hate to check them forever, forever.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: In this case, we just we got the ping.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: We're like, nope, this one's going exactly this cow and exactly this pasture at exactly this time.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Even better, we've got a location on her.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: So we had a cow that was buried clear down in the brush.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, rather than I haven't been here 47 times for false alerts or false alarms or saying, like, hey, there was no calf.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, the one time she calved, we went, and when I got here's where she's at, and we wouldn't have found her.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was buried in there, you know.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: So we get down in the brush, and sure enough, there's the cow, there's the calf, process the calf.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And so just a huge amount of labor savings.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And again, if that cow had needed help or had needed a hand or whatever else, we'd have been there in a time frame that you can help, as opposed to saying, well, I found out she was fine yesterday, and here I am the next day, and there's a dead calf, you know.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And so I think just a lot of value in again not wasting time on things that don't need help, so that we can focus time on the things that do need help.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: So big, big time management tool and and peace of mind and just knowing that that the cattle are well.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So anything else that comes to mind for you, Scott, specifically with the XT Pro, as far as maybe some use cases you've seen or some some practical applications, boots on the ground.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned kind of the the cattleman view of it, um, as far as the benefits this XT Pro adds for ranchers that have used it.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the Pro is a the product we primarily use in cows and bulls, and has all those added features we talked about a minute ago.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Um and and first and foremost is health.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: That's the most important thing.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: Um the out-of-fence alerts has become very, very popular.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: All of us who have livestock, they get out.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: So it gives us a tool to find them and find them in a more rapid manner.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I've had a couple of situations I talked to folks this summer on it was like, hey, those cows are fine, we'll go get them in the morning, or that herd bowl needs to be found now, yes, type of thing.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, one super practical application that I've had is I've got a customer in central Oregon, uh, runs a number of bulls.
23:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh we put uh tag pro tags in all his yearling bowls this year, and those get deployed all over the place.
24:00
SPEAKER_02: Big pastures, little pastures, um, some purebred pastures, commercial pastures, you name it.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: He he deploys those bulls that way.
24:08
SPEAKER_02: And so he is able to look at those bulls, know that they're where they're supposed to be, um, and certainly get mount counts on them and kind of know that the bulls are out there working.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: And he's we've sorted through those bulls and he they kind of group in themselves into the high step count bowls, the high mount bulls, kind of the medium range, and some bowls that you know maybe aren't as high.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: In his case, some of those lower step count bowls or lower mount count bowls aren't exposed to as many cows, sure, or they're in smaller pastures, so a little common sense can kick in there and help you through that.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: Right.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: But he has had some fire struggles.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: And the other day we were able to help him locate cows because the bulls were with the cows, the cows were in some meadows out of harm's way.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: And so that was very reassuring to him that he could find them.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Now he hadn't used the pastures like I would have liked, etc.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: And we'd worked to get him set up for that.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and I'd told his daughter, who does some work on his records, hey, if this ever happens, this is how you do it.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: And um and so within a matter of a few minutes, they figured some things out, and then it was kind of Katie Bar the door of, hey Scott, maybe we need to go through some more of your onboarding and do a little more in-depth training.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: So we have a whole support staff that does that.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: When you buy tags from us, first of all, they're in a file associated with you.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: So you don't have to try to put them in some computer program you don't have, they're already in your file.
25:46
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: And you associate them with the tag number of your animal, yep, and you're off and running.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: But we have a series of onboarding calls to help you get started.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: And if you want to do the basics, that's fine, we do that.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: If you want to go into in-depth, we do that.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: But there's actually four staff members based in Fargo that work on that every day as a customer support mechanism.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: So we're in the business of selling product.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I've been around this game for a long time.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: If you don't support it, you won't sell it.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: And so we have really bumped up our support team.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: Uh, they're great guys, um, do some trade show work for us as well as support the tags in the office, but uh are really a key component to the success our customers have in the field.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: And a U.S.-based support team.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: I call them, there's a person on the other end, not a robot.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: They speak English, not whatever derivative English most call centers are speaking, and and they know what the product is they're supporting.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things I've appreciated.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Like you mentioned, you're based out of Fargo, North Dakota.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: It's American-made, it's American supported.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: These are real people, and it's one of those deals, unfortunately, is more and more rare than what it has been as far as being able to get hold of a person who can answer my question when I'm in a bind.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to try to go through a chat bot.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to try to go through a series of robocalls.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk to somebody that doesn't know who I am or what I'm talking about and is on the opposite side of the planet from me.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: I want somebody that knows the product, knows who I am, and can get me help so that we can get the job done.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, and and I've been impressed with 701x's support there.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: Connor actually leads that team.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: Um, but a ton of good guys there and and very well versed in our products.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: And and uh as we've grown, we've had to specialize them in different things.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
27:34
SPEAKER_02: But all of them can support our products.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that was one of the things that I brought to the table was the need for that.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I don't consider myself a techie guy.
27:44
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: I've used technology over the years and and appreciate it, um, but I'm not a gadget guy.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't look at all the things that it can do.
27:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I look at what it needs to do to help me.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm on the end of the spectrum that is kind of in the middle of our customer base.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: We have some guys who don't want to do anything.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: If the phone goes off, they'll look at it.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:05
SPEAKER_02: Um but uh so the bull thing was an example of of uh pro tags really working.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: Um one of the really interesting things that uh we're getting into now is digital preg checks.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: So, okay, you got tags in your cows and you AI'd them, and you had a couple come back and they showed esteras, and so you rebred them, and then you turned out herdbulls.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: And then your herd bulls were end of season and you started getting really interesting alerts on them, like low activity.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, that means your cows are probably bed.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: So then you pull your bulls, because they don't need to be out there laying under the trees where the cows are at.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: And now it's this time of year, fall.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's preg check time, right?
28:55
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, you can look at your system and know, hey, I haven't had anybody in estrus in 90 days.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: So put in your last estrus and put in today's current date.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: Boom, nobody's been in heat.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Right.
29:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh every once in a while you'll get a surprise cow.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, where last fall I had one that that showed an estrus basically this time of year, and I was like, that can't be right.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: And and uh I said, well, there's nothing we can do about her 50 miles from home.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Guess what happened 21 days later?
29:30
SPEAKER_02: Another estrus alert.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that cow has dumped a calf.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: Yep, and now we make a business decision.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: Do we make a rerun on her or do we do the right thing in color and move on down the road?
29:42
SPEAKER_02: And so that digital preg check gives a lot of assurance that your bull did his job or your AI did it just job.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: Because open cows don't have as much value as bred cows, right?
29:55
SPEAKER_02: And calves in today's market have a significant coupon.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Yep, and so that breed up percentage is important.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: And again, back to pros, I've had customers that actually use that to weigh.
30:09
SPEAKER_02: Do we need to put another bull out in that pasture?
30:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: Did they get a bull hurt?
30:13
SPEAKER_02: They found that out early season.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: So maybe they darted him because they couldn't get him in, but put another bull out in that group of cows, or put a couple bulls out in that group of cows.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: Or if you're a small purebred operation and you've got one herd bull out cleaning up from your AI, and you continue to get cattle and heat, is is he maybe not doing what you need him to do.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: And you know that in season, and you don't get to fall preg check and go, holy smokes, I've got 30% opens now.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: What do I do?
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: And so that real-time management of cattle uh like you started with, yes, can now be enhanced in other ways.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: So the combination of pros in the cows and lights in the calves really enable you to have a real-time value of the animals that are in your herd, and you know I've got 12 hours a day, you work on the ranch.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Okay, if I have to spend four hours chasing cattle and looking at them, that's not the best use of my time.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: But if with a little bit of technology and I can spend one or two or 15 minutes if it's a day we don't have any challenges, then you can do those other things, which in your case may be putting in embryos, calling customers, uh arranging for recips, uh, checking on deliveries, all of those crazy things that take a lot of time.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: You bet.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: Um but you can step out of doing chores and start into doing business.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And it is just a time management tool in that sense.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, now we can choose how we're using our time rather than it being kind of obligated.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: I have to put the time into 100% of the animals when really only this small subset needed my attention, but I don't know which ones they are with it without the tool to tell me.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: One other use I would bring up, you know, as far as uh a use case that we ran into with the XT Pro this year, so everything that we turned out was confirmed pregnant.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: So we knew for sure they're pregnant, they're pregnant, they've been ultrasounded, the vet's been in them, they are pregnant for sure.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: But as we all know, a kit just because a cow is pregnant does not always mean she stays pregnant.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, just like the scenario you described as far as a cow losing a calf, um, we had a cow and this would be oh 60 days or ago or so.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: And she's supposed to be due for October, and so this would be back into about June there, and we got a calving alert.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, this this cow shouldn't be calving, and then I thought, well, I hope I hope it's a false alarm.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: I hope, I hope there's, you know, it's it's uh you know, false positive or whatever.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I wouldn't have been out there checking for that.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't have been looking for that.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: This cow you'd have never found because she's buried in the cattails, but we get out there and sure enough, you can see fresh blood on the tail and everything else, she has just lost a calf.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so now, just like you mentioned, it's the real-time alerts because in this case, we're not looking at turning a bowl out or anything like that for what we do, for what we're working with with embryo transfer and artificial insemination.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: This was actually a donor cow, so really, really valuable female, really, really high-end cow, one that we've put a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money into, ton of value in the genetic package here.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Now we've just lost this calf.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: But rather than find out in the fall, when we say, well, we have to get out to October when we expected the calf, and then you probably get to November before you say, Yeah, no, she just didn't get a calf, she didn't get a calf late or anything else.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Now we're clear behind the eight ball where we say, well, all this time she's been open since June.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: We we wouldn't have known till November.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And all that time, for a donor cow, a donor can generate quite a little bit of revenue or quite a little bit of value in embryos if you know she's open.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: But we assumed she was pregnant, she was pregnant when she left.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: We assumed we were gonna get a calf, that's the value we were anticipating receiving from our investment in this cow.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: But because we knew, due to the XT Pro alerting us, we found out that she had calved, we realized we lost a calf.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: That cow was able to re-enter embryo production in this time frame and recoup some of that loss from that calf rather than saying, well, we didn't even know until that whole window's gone, and it's time to be breeding her back for the next calf, you know, coming in November, December for synchronization and implants.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just another one of those.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: You talk about the real the ability to respond in real time instead of finding out, like, well, there was a problem, but now it's clear past the whole season and it's too late to do anything about it, whether that's turning bulls out to rectify a live cover scenario, or in this case, bringing in a donor to make embryos to recoup value because we we were not going to have a live calf out of out of that donor to sell this year.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, kind of I guess an atypical scenario there, but would not have been possible.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: We would not have found out that that cow had calved had we not had there's no way we'd have ended up digging through the cattails, much less knowing which cattails to dig through, much less having any reason to do so.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: That cow would have showed back up in the herd three days later and we'd have had no idea, she'd look fine, you know.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh anyway, one of those that's the only reason we knew is she had an XT Pro in, and because of that, she's back in embryo production, recouping dollars that impact our bottom line rather than being a total loss on the year, as far as all the feeds in, and there's no calf for a sale ticket.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and in addition to that, there could be a health issue that comes along with that.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: So in real time, you found out there was a problem, you went and checked on it.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: Right.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, you you probably uh on the app probably gave it the thumbs down that no, she's not calving, and then went out there and oh boy, you know, she is.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: And so we have that on the app because there's some actions or activities that cows will do that simulate calving.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's usually an up and down kind of an action.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not normal, and so uh we have a little icon on the app where you can give it a thumbs down, which I did on that cow I had a year ago and didn't believe it.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and then then down the road you get the real truth.
35:56
SPEAKER_02: So I think that's you know, exciting thing about it.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: Back to the lights, obviously, in calves are good, but we're seeing more and more guys this fall put them in wean cattle.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh they've got calves coming in, they they didn't choose to put in lights early like you did, but they're coming into their pens and they have value.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: And like we talked about the purebred guy, it it may have a lot of value, and so they can use those in conjunction with our base stations we call it Watson, and um, and know that those cattle are in their normal routine, their normal step count, their normal placement of their head, etc., is accurate.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: And then then if you get an alert, it's time to go look at them.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: But same same story, it's it's real-time management of cattle and really focusing on cattle that need some help and not on the ones that are in good shape.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: Because most pearbred guys do a really good job with health.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's important to them, they spend a lot of time and money in that.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's always outliers, and and our role with technologies is help find those outliers.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yep, yep.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I mean, just like you mentioned as far as the help on that cow that had slipped the calf, I didn't even think about this component until you mentioned that.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: But we knew she was open, so we brought her in.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Or I should say we we assumed she had lost a calf, given that that was she'd given us the alert and it looked like she had.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: So we brought her in the next time the vet was here, had him look at her, and he said, yep, sure enough, but she was dirty as well.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: So she'd retained some placenta, she could have even retained, you know, part of a calf or whatever else.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: And so it's one of those scenarios where if that had been left to sit and fester, that cow may have cleaned on her own.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: But at the time he looked at her, she had not cleaned on her own.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: It was not a case of, well, she looks fresh but clean.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, she's she's dirty, i.e., we needed a couple rounds of prostaglandin and we're able to clean that out.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: But that's one of those.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: We look at that cow, the value of a breeding animal like that, of especially a high-end donor, lies in her reproductive tract.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Once that reproductive tract is toast, this isn't just an animal we're intending to eat for beef.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: We're intending to reproduce this cow.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And had we had something stay in there that developed into an infection and/or in any way, shape, or form compromise the long-term reproductive ability of that cow, that's an enormous loss.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that cow, an incredibly valuable cow, incredibly unique cow, very difficult to replicate and go make another one, you know, of this cow.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that would have really been a significant loss, you know, if we hadn't, if we had lost that reproductive function in any way, shape, or form.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad you mentioned not only we're able to pick up the time, but we're able to get her in in a timely fashion, clean her out.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: She's good, she's fine.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: We're maintaining the long-term reproductive function of that cow because a problem was addressed in a timely fashion, because we were aware of it in a timely fashion, and we wouldn't have been with without the sensor.
38:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is a small investment in the value of your herd.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: So if you value your cattle and you value their sales, um, you doesn't take very many challenges to pay for a lot of our products.
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so it helps you along the way do a better job, um, but it really just uh is a very simple insurance policy to make your day-to-day operations easier, but protect the value of your cattle.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: So jumping from the XT Pros over to the XT Watson that you'd mentioned before, what is the XT Watson and what use cases have you seen for it?
39:24
SPEAKER_02: So the Watson um does two things it's a water monitor, and so remotely you can measure the temperature of water, both hot and cold.
39:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh you can enter the depth and diameter of your tanks so you can know that they are where they need to be from a depth percentage.
39:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh and so if that uh tank isn't filling and the water level's going down, you'll be able to see that on your app, on your phone.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: And if it gets below a certain level, you'll get a warning or a notification, hey, too the tank level's too low.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: Um I actually had my temperature set kind of low and got some warm temperature alerts on my tank, so I'd adjust that here recently.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: The other thing it is, is it's a it's a great base station.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: So you don't have to use the water application, that's just a simple core that attaches.
40:21
SPEAKER_02: You can use it as a base station for these lights to ping into.
40:25
SPEAKER_02: And so if you wean a set of calves, you put them in a in a pen, put up a Watson, uh, as they come up to drink, they will will communicate that way.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: And so again, it's a Bluetooth communication mechanism, um, you know, very high tech, basically a hundred feet, and boom, the data dumps, and and you get uh a notification that that animal has come to drink.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Um and so to me it's kind of an inventory check that if I know there's 55 head of cattle in this pen and they all have been in range of the Watson, then I can take an inventory and do that.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: Right.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh right.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: So that that tool is used uh in pasture, easy to move from pasture to pasture to dunk in a different tank.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're using it more and more for these wean cattle as a base station.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, interesting.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, and like I mentioned to you, it's one that we might, I've not deployed a Watson yet.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: It might be one that we look at.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: We do truck water to a lot of these different pastures, and right now we truck it on a regular basis just to try to make sure we're staying ahead of it.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: There's probably some of these loops we're making we don't really need to make as far as the water really isn't that low, but we're we're just consistently running those trucks.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm looking at it as a tool that we might be able to say, hey, we can monitor how deep that that water is or isn't, you know, with with that sensor, and say once it gets to a certain threshold, then we send the truck and maybe save a trip or two here or there and save some wear and tear on the on the water truck and some fuel and some man hours and things like that.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Again, just like not running out to check a pasture that's perfectly fine, not running a water truck to a to a water tank that's not empty.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so another application there.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Anything else you touch on with Watson before we jump to the next thing there?
42:10
SPEAKER_02: I just like the redundancy of it where you get so I'm getting notifications on tags.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Yep, they come to my app.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I can I can look in the detail on that Watson and know that all the cattle in that pasture have been to that drinking site once.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: And that gives me reassurance that okay, I've got to double check here.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: You bet, absolutely.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at new products.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Right now, we're currently you're running the XT Lite, which we've implemented here, the XT Pro, which we've implemented here, XT Watson, which is available, and we're looking at potential future implementation of what else could people keep an eye out for as far as some future products or or maybe even upgrades to existing products uh that are on the horizon for 701x?
42:53
SPEAKER_02: So in the last six months, we've released our auto tagger, which is an extremely high value device because most of the time we're tagging an older cattle with thicker ears.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh so it is a battery-powered applicator that we designed internally, uh, extra gearing for going through those thicker ears.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh our pro tags have two pins, so it accommodates the two-pin construction of our tags.
43:21
SPEAKER_02: Um, but that if you're gonna put in more than 10 tags, uh a pro tag or an auto tagger, pardon me, is just a go-to.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: And so that's a really keen thing that we brought to the market very fast.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, they were working on it, it was in prototype stages.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: I came to work in October and said this is a deal maker, guys.
43:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so that is something that we brought out and has been very successful.
43:49
SPEAKER_02: Um down the road, we have uh kind of the new cool thing that will be out there, is called auto ID.
43:57
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: Auto ID is actually a very Small device that you mount to your chute.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: And as you're working cattle through your chute, it will read our tags and pull them up in software.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: And so instead of having to scan them or hand enter them, if 357 is in the chute, that software is going to be open to 357.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: Or if you're utilizing our software as a management tool and you're just wanting to apply a set set of vaccinations or protocols to a set of cows, it will just do that automatically as they come through the chute.
44:35
SPEAKER_02: So those are out of beta testing, in field testing.
44:40
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
44:40
SPEAKER_02: We've deployed a handful of them in the last month.
44:43
SPEAKER_02: And so my expectation is that you will see those out there in the real world within the next year.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: But one of those that I'm legal to talk about and is and is very exciting.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: We're doing a ton of work on the feedlot side of the business.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: That's not our wasn't our original goal and not where we started, but we are working on some advanced technology there with some really interesting readers that do things with triangulation and locations and pens and things that have never been done before in the marketplace.
45:19
SPEAKER_02: And what my speech was to our guys a couple weeks ago when I was back in Fargo was my whole career I've been told that can't be done.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: And you guys are telling me it can be done.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: So why can you do it and nobody else could?
45:34
SPEAKER_02: And and they chuckled and said, Well, there's more of us, and obviously we are dedicated to get it done versus selling you know what we already have.
45:43
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
45:44
SPEAKER_02: And so those are more down the road.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: But that that auto tagger is an awesome piece of equipment.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: The auto IE ID device will be one of those that's a go-to.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: And you'll be able to use it uh by hand as well.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: So if you want to throw that on the dash of your side by side and go drive through a set of cattle, it will work better than your cell phone application that you use today.
46:11
SPEAKER_02: So it's uh it's it's just again one of those devices that um when you work in a building with a bunch of engineers, they have a solution for everything.
46:25
SPEAKER_02: And they will try, try and try, if they're supported financially, to make these things work.
46:30
SPEAKER_02: And that's the vision of our company is to continue to bring things to the market that make the business easier for the producer and their staff.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: Because it's not good if just the owner likes it.
46:45
SPEAKER_02: We want the guys on the ranch or the guys on the operation to believe in this product and use it in a manner that makes their job easier.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, absolutely.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the records component of 701x, and that's something we haven't dived into uh at a deep level as of yet.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Walk us through what can be done as far as records andor registry integrations is another subject that we'd mentioned as far as possibilities to integrate between shoot site applications with some new products, integrate with the current tags, integrate with things like registries.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Um walk us through the the herd records and then registry integrations, if you would.
47:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so herd records um is a very important part of our business.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: And so with our monitoring tags, you have to have something to receive all this information.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so that is done in our in our herd records.
47:35
SPEAKER_02: And so today I can pull up a screen on an individual animal, look at their step count on a bull, look at his mount count, put in the dates of the period of time that is.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: If I switch tags, it will go back to the previous data from the last tag.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: And so that's information I can find all day long on our monitoring tags.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: But uh, I also have customers that aren't all in yet, and so they have a set of replacement heifers in there with just visual tags or with EID tags.
48:05
SPEAKER_02: All of those ID devices you can put in our systems and read into there, and so with that, any records you want to have, whether it's a pedigree record, performance data, ultrasound, uh, if you want records for treatments, calving, uh, your breeding records, whether that be AI, ET, your egg inventory, your semen inventory, all of those things are available in our software.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: Um the important thing or the differentiating thing with our software is you don't have to be with Wi-Fi.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: So you can be out in the field, throw stuff in your phone, you can be at a remote chute that doesn't have Wi-Fi and be entering data, and it just uploads when you uh get into service and can can do that upload.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: So I have yet to find something that our guys didn't think of going into it.
49:00
SPEAKER_02: Um we do add to it from time to time.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh recently we've had some folks want to do more sophisticated um semen testing data in there, and so we're gonna we're gonna alter that and add some components uh for guys who you know want to put more detail on their semen test in their animal records.
49:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:25
SPEAKER_02: Um, so we can do that uh, you know, at in a real base level today.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: Our goal is to make it easier to do for a shoot side application.
49:36
SPEAKER_02: The shoot side work is is great to where if you want to apply protocols for a day of work at the chute, all the way down to the products you're gonna use and their dosages, you can do that ahead of time.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: And any animal that comes through the chute, it just applies that to that animal, you save it and away you go.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: If you end up doing something different to an animal, they had a bad eye or they had a bad foot, and you went to the to the extra effort to get that doctored, you can just throw it in that record right as you go.
50:09
SPEAKER_02: Right.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, important things that uh you can do real time.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, our registry services, we um we have a number of actions there.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: We have a number of breed associations that use us to do all their work.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: So all the data that comes into the association, the data that is utilized um by them on farm, but then turned into the association to generate EPDs, uh, we're the machine that turns that data for the whole breed into whoever is managing uh their process of developing EPDs, and then also communicating that information back to those breeders.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh so if they're doing that as a customer of 701x, that's just part of the registry services they use through their breed association.
51:00
SPEAKER_02: One of the really exciting new products for us is an API that's been developed so you can seamlessly transmit data for the Angus Association.
51:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: So we worked for about a year.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: An API is just an electronic transfer.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: And so the way that works is in your herd records, you've entered birth dates, uh, weaning weights, sires, dams, teat scores, all of those things on animals, and you've got bull calves you want to register.
51:33
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: And so you go into your record and say, or select all, or select the ones you want to register.
51:43
SPEAKER_02: That pings Angus, and they determine if those reg numbers for sires and dams are legit.
51:49
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
51:50
SPEAKER_02: And then they say, Yep, this is good, and accept the data.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: What they then do is process that into a reg number for that calf, fresh EPDs for that calf, data to tie to the cow, and send it back to you seamlessly.
52:05
SPEAKER_02: And so that's done with a tool that we've developed internally.
52:09
SPEAKER_02: Uh that thing has gone live about 60 days ago.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: So it's not something that's out there and coming, it is actively going on right now.
52:17
SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
52:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, and and we worked in partnership with Angus as the first ever partner to do it at that level.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, our goal is down the road to do that with more associations.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: Whether we're doing their behind-the-scene works or not, we want to be a partner with them to get more accurate information to the association and then get that information back to breeders to utilize.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: You bet.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: You bet, absolutely.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
52:45
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, looking at looking at the future, I mean, XT Watson's already out there.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: We've got the uh auto tagger that's already out there and ready to be used, the auto ID that's that's coming and coming down the pipeline out of beta testing now.
52:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, you've got the option to integrate with different uh breed associations, you know, whether you're doing the back end or just interfacing with an association like Angus.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, you're able to do records via 701x, pretty well anything that you can record, it can be recorded and tied to that calf.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: Anything else that you would throw in here, Scott, as far as anybody that's taking a look at 701x andor the products you offer, anything we've missed or glossed over that you'd like to touch, as far as closing thoughts for anyone considering interacting with 701x for the first time?
53:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I really think the big thing is that we care about what goes on in the field.
53:30
SPEAKER_02: We want people to be able to do this for a long time.
53:34
SPEAKER_02: And we want to share some very unique technology with them to protect the value of their cattle and to protect the value of their time and be able to be ranching for multiple generations after this.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's really the vision of our our founder, Kevin Bifford.
53:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh, he was one of 15 kids growing up in North Dakota.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: He figured out at an early age that he was probably not going to go back to the family ranch, and so he got into the engineering business and has has really made a nice little niche there.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: But our employees, whether they're sales, whether they're uh in our support team, whether they're a software engineer or uh mechanical engineer in some of our design work and all of that, they are in it.
54:25
SPEAKER_02: And they uh don't have to be told that this is important stuff.
54:30
SPEAKER_02: They know a number of our customer names.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh they know that what they're doing is important work for the future.
54:37
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's for me as a new employee to 701.
54:42
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I said earlier what attracted me there, but I think that's what our is our driver in the business that we're not trying to do this to sell it off and get rich.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: Kevin's been very clear that we will never sell off our company in its entirety.
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we have a great management team, we have a great production team.
55:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, we do have some exciting news that we're moving to a bigger building in January because we've outgrown our our building in good old downtown Fargo.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: Good.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: Um and really the only other thing that's out there we haven't talked about is is we are doing some DNA work today.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and we're gonna add that to that footprint.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
55:23
SPEAKER_02: So as part of this new building, we will have a DNA lab in our own building.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
55:28
SPEAKER_02: And our goal is to process samples faster than everybody else.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
55:34
SPEAKER_02: So we already have some prototype equipment for processing samples, yeah.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: Not running the samples because those DNA machines are pretty specific.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: But processing samples and getting data back to end users will be something that is part of our focus for the next year.
55:51
SPEAKER_02: And again, just an additional service that we can provide our customer base.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: Whether you're commercial and all you want to know is breed makeup, we can do that today.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, or if you're a purebred producer and you want some other details on your animals, uh, that will be the next horizon for us.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: Awesome, fantastic.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, I so appreciate you taking the time, Scott.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for driving down.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sitting down to chat with me.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: Anything else to throw in before we close here?
56:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh no, I mean the big thing to me is it's exciting for us to be able to share this.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh I know that you have a unique customer base uh doing some unique things with animals, and and they're really the sweet spot for us as customers.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: You bet.
56:33
SPEAKER_02: And so your fit is great with uh what we're doing.
56:36
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
56:36
SPEAKER_02: Um and so um, you know, I I encourage you to challenge us, uh, ping us about what we're gonna do as our next step with Watsons and auto IDs.
56:47
SPEAKER_02: Uh we're gonna deploy both of those here so you have new new toys to play with.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: Love it.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, but at the end of the day, um, you know, we're not going away.
56:57
SPEAKER_02: We're here for the long haul.
56:59
SPEAKER_02: We're excited about the business, and and more than anything, we want to support the producers out here who do a lot of work to get cattle to market, whether they're commercial or purebred, and do some things to help them out.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I can absolutely recommend the product because I use the product.
57:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, long before I did any work as a partner with 701x, I bought the product, I put my money in the product, I've used the product, I like the product.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: I won't endorse something that's not in use here or that I'm not confident in, but I'm absolutely confident in the genetics I sell and represent.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like 701x in your series of products, specifically at this point, the XT Lite and XT Pro add value for me.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: They're worth the investment for me, and I would recommend them to people that buy genetics here and spend that money, put that time and effort into getting those cattle.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and take that next step to say, hey, there's a way to keep track of these animals, a way to keep track of health, a way to keep track of location, a way to keep track of calving, heat, all of these different pieces, and and so many more.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: Then I I'm not even utilizing the technology to its fullest extent.
58:00
SPEAKER_00: There's still more for me to learn.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: And I can I can confidently recommend that people put these products in and will receive value and look forward to continuing to work with 701x as a partner.
58:11
SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
58:11
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
58:12
SPEAKER_00: You bet.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Scott.
58:14
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Got Any Cows podcast.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: And visit us anytime at godanycows.com.