🇦🇺 Malcolm Brady: Simplifying with Digital Farm Records

I’m Malcom Brady from Burrawang West Station. It’s between Condobolin and Parkes. It’s a little place called Ootha. There’s 12,000 acres here. Two other properties, one with 6,000 and one is a 900 acre irrigation property. So we’ve got 3 aggregations adding up to 18,000 acres.

Our main enterprise on the farm is the Stud, which is our most important one; 2,000 stud ewes. Then we’ve got our commercial ewes, and then we’ve got our feedlot operation which is very important to do finished lambs. Also, we buy off our own brand clients, our genetics and put them through the feedlot.

Our fourth one is a Quarantine center which goes by truck to Sydney Airport and then either goes to Malaysia or The Philippines at this stage. Then we have a fifth one which exports embryos to other parts of the world.

The reporting part was a nightmare. I did it all with a notebook, obviously. Then we sort of sat down with 15 different pages trying to remember where everything was and in which paddock. One of the Sydney shareholders suggested AgriWebb and that’s how we came to be involved with them. We had a quick look and thought, ‘Yes, beautiful. This is exactly what we want.’

Now, with the reporting and the shareholders, it’s so much easier and simple with AgriWebb. I don’t know how I would do it with the growth feeding our team every day. AgriWebb has been a huge help. It did frighten me a bit, but it’s just so simple. I don’t think I’ve had a system so complex be so simple in the reports. Every different person in the enterprise might want to get on, especially our accountant. Being a shareholder run company, we’ve got the orders, we’ve got the shareholders we need to please, and the fact that you’ve got all these reports is just amazing.

The reporting helps the shareholders…they do feel part of the business. They can see the numbers. It’s not airy numbers either; it’s the proper numbers coming out in the reports.

Then you’ve got your auditors that come. As soon as you mention you’ve got AgriWebb, they say, ‘This is great. This is an hours job, not half a day.’

It’s been a really big tool in knowing exactly what we’re spending and what we’re getting back out, and the fact that you know where everything is…and not only just in here, all the other six staff members also know.

The backup and support has been amazing to me. You can’t learn everything on the first day. Not us old fellas. Even though they’re a lot younger, they’ve been very patient with and very gentle with an old soul.

——————————————————

For the full transcript please watch the video on our website with captions on. Alternatively you can learn more about our digital farm records on our farm record keeping page.