ASKBILL provides detailed data about your livestock and pastures, and predicts opportunities and threats to your individual business from the weather, pests or disease.
A new app launched will give sheep producers the power to see their stock’s future, all from the palm of their hand.
The app, available at www.askbill.com.au, was made live to the public, marking the start of a limited offering of the ASKBILL platform as part of a pre-release user feedback program – a vital step in putting the finishing touches to the product prior to ASKBILL’s full commercial release later this year.
ASKBILL is the latest app developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC), in collaboration with the Data to Decisions CRC, the Bureau of Meteorology, the University of New England, and the CRC’s 40 Participant organisations representing the length and breadth of the sheep production value chain.
Sheep CRC chief executive Prof. James Rowe said ASKBILL had been designed to complement producers’ knowledge by providing real-time predictions of the future risks to the farming system.
“ASKBILL provides detailed data about your livestock and pastures, and predicts opportunities and threats to your individual business from the weather, pests or disease – the critical information needed for making more precise farming decisions, protecting the wellbeing of your flock and maximising its productivity,” Prof. Rowe said.
“And ASKBILL has been designed with the producer in mind – the app is easy to use and we have minimised the inputs required from producers in order to start receiving risk alerts.”
ASKBILL draws on information generated by biophysical models that use daily downloads of climate data and forecasts to estimate the following outputs for individual farms:
- The risk of flystrike
- Pasture production
- Livestock nutritional requirements and feed budgets
- The risk of parasite infection, and
- Risks associated with extreme weather events – heat and cold.
“By entering farm and production data and monitoring the risk alerts, ASKBILL also allows producers and industry to validate the standards of care their animals have received,” Prof. Rowe said.