Off-Feed Event Diagnostic

Where it works well

It reads the conflicting signals together, at the morning call, when the crew is too stretched to.

On a mid-to-large yard a single pen's intake drop can sit unread through a morning; the cost of reading it wrong runs both ways — pull cattle that didn't need it, or miss SARA or an emerging BRD case and the pen goes backwards for weeks.
Best where ration step-ups and heat events overlap through the warmer months and the read has to be consistent across many pens — not one good operator's memory.
The recaptured time goes back to the nutritionist and the crew for the borderline pens that need a real look, not a faster guess.

The signals that tell a feeding problem from a sickness — the mix sheets, the bunk-score trend, the heat-load forecast, the recent pulls — already exist, but they sit in different systems, and weighing them together for every flagged pen at 6am is exactly the work a busy feeding crew does unevenly under pressure.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when the pen data is stale or thin — a tidy ranking built on yesterday's bunk read.

It ranks on the evidence it is given. A SARA case can mimic a heat-load back-off and an early BRD pull can look like either — when two causes genuinely overlap, the ranking is a hypothesis, not a finding.
Weak on the things the records do not capture — a sick steer the pen riders would have spotted on a walk, a water issue between checks, a feed-quality change the mix sheet does not show. It should rank what it can see and say so.
The differential is only as good as the bunk-score and intake history behind it; a yard that records intake loosely gets a confident answer off loose data.

The honest test

If you cannot say, looking at the ranking, which day's bunk read and which mix sheet each cause was weighed from — this tool has made your morning read faster, not your call on the pen any righter.

Feed it a bunk score that was eyeballed rather than read, a step-up logged a day late, or a heat-load figure from the wrong pen, and it produces a clean, ranked differential that reads as trustworthy precisely because it is well laid out. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It ranks and suggests. A person decides and acts. That boundary is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES

Lays out the ranked causes with a confidence and the evidence each was weighed from

Shows the intake trend beside the ration step-up, heat load and treatment history

Suggests a first investigation step — pull the mix sheets, walk the pen, hold the step-up

WHAT IT WON’T

Pull cattle, change the ration, or dose anything

Diagnose SARA, a BRD case, or a heat event on its own

Decide whether to dispatch the pen riders, log and monitor, or escalate to the vet

Acting on the wrong cause has a real cost per head — treat a feeding problem as sickness and you pull and dose cattle that did not need it; miss subacute ruminal acidosis or an emerging respiratory case and the pen's gain and feed conversion go backwards for weeks. Those calls sit with the feedlot manager, the consulting nutritionist, or the vet, who carry the welfare and production consequence — so they stay on the decision, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Pen-level intake and bunk scores recorded consistently, with the ration, heat-load and pull history that surround them.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

Daily dry-matter intake per pen

Needs shaping

Bunk-score trend per call

Needs shaping

Ration step-up rate and timing

Usual weak point

Heat-load forecast and accumulated heat load

Usual weak point

Pull and treatment history per pen

Usual weak point

The real first job

The intake and bunk-score capture is usually the weak point — read unevenly across pens and shifts, or entered a day late. Getting daily DMI and bunk scores recorded the same way every pen, every call, with the step-up and pull history landing against the right pen, is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the ranking layer on top. Once the records are consistent, every morning's read starts from solid ground.

Right fit if…

You run enough pens that a sudden intake drop can sit unread through a morning

Ration step-ups and heat events overlap through your warmer months

You record daily DMI and bunk scores per pen with reasonable consistency

A consulting nutritionist or vet is the one who confirms the harder calls

Walk away if…

Your bunk reads and intake numbers are eyeballed and entered loosely

Step-up timing and pull history live in heads or paper, not against the pen

You run few enough pens that the manager already reads every one daily

You want a tool that diagnoses the pen and pulls cattle for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can rank the wrong cause — which is exactly why it never pulls cattle, changes the ration, or doses on its own. It lays out the likely causes with a confidence and the evidence each was weighed from — the step-up timing, the bunk-score collapse, the heat-load trend, the recent pulls — and suggests a first step like walking the pen. The feedlot manager, nutritionist or vet reads that, agrees or overrides, and decides whether to dispatch the pen riders, log and monitor, or escalate. The tool surfaces the differential; the person stands behind the call.

It works from what the records actually hold. If daily DMI is entered unevenly and bunk scores are eyeballed rather than read against a consistent scale, the ranking is built on loose data and will read more confident than the evidence behind it deserves. Getting intake and bunk scores captured the same way every pen and every call — with the step-up and pull history landing against the right pen — is usually the first piece of work, and the piece that pays off across every morning read after.

No. It removes the scramble of pulling the mix sheets, the bunk trend, the heat-load forecast and the pull history together at 6am, so the nutritionist and vet spend their time on the judgement — is this subacute acidosis from too fast a step-up, a heat-load back-off, or the early edge of a respiratory break, and what does the pen need. The call stays theirs. The capacity it frees goes back to the borderline pens that need a real look between visits.

Current to this morning’s call. A two-day intake drop, the bunk score from the last read, the step-up logged when it happened and the heat-load forecast for the day ahead are what the ranking weighs — feed it yesterday’s bunk score or a step-up entered a day late and it reasons off a pen that has already moved. The honest test: do you know, right now, that the intake, bunk and heat-load figures behind the ranking are today’s, for this pen?

Pen intake, ration, NLIS-linked treatment records and heat-load data are your operational records. Any deployment runs against your own systems and data handling, not a shared pool — we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; Pen B-14 and its records are invented.

No — it gives the crew a faster, more consistent first read, it does not carry the obligation. The welfare response to a heat event, the decision to pull and treat a suspected BRD case, and the judgement on a flagged pen sit with the people accountable for the cattle under your animal-welfare and health management — the manager, the nutritionist, the vet. The tool gets the morning read most of the way; the accountable person closes the gap.

What it takes to build

3–4 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude · feed/health data connectors · review dashboard

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One contained change, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your yard?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one contained change, low risk. Tell us where the morning off-feed read hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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