Making Farm Paperwork a thing of the past

Mike Noonan is a spring calving Dairy farmer from Glenville, Co. Cork. In 2014 Mike went into a partnership with his in-laws, David and Breda Forde.Keen to bring something new to this venture, Mike decided that more paperwork wasn’t going to be it.

Mike sought out a solution to eliminate farm paperwork, he decided to take a chance on the Herdwatch app. Two years down the line, we caught up with Mike to see how he has been getting on with the Herdwatch farm management app.

I do all my paperwork on the phone now

Mike told us that before going into partnership, everything was recorded by pen and paper: “I wasn’t the best at the bookw

ork and I knew if it wasn’t recorded on the spot, then it could easily be forgotten.” With Herdwatch you can record everything, as it happens, even if you don’t have internet at the time.

It takes the guess-work out of recording animal remedies

Mike finds Herdwatch great to keep on top of his Bord Bia paperwork. “I record all my injections and tubes there and then.” He also finds it great for keeping an eye on what animals are in withdrawal: “it just takes the guesswork out of it, as you can quickly check Herdwatch to see what’s still in withdrawal.”

Taking the hard work out of Drying-off

Mike records all his dry-offs in Herdwatch as it happens. He knows that once it’s recorded in Herdwatch, the information will be sent to ICBF for him as well. He said “it takes the hard work out of drying-off and gets rid of the double recording.”

It saves me 3-4 hours a week in busy times.

Mike registers all his calves through the Herdwatch app as he tags them, as well as recording all his breeding records. He records heat detections, AI’s and Pregnancy scanning in the app, as they happen. Mike said: “I definitely save 30 minutes a day on paperwork, just by being able to record on the spot.”