Saving five hours a week: How Pollok Country Park is Transforming Livestock Management

In the heart of Glasgow, Pollok Country Park is home to a long-established herd of pedigree
Highland cattle, managed alongside the wider historic estate and surrounding parkland.
Looking after the livestock is a team led by Livestock Supervisor Melissa Curran, who has
worked at Pollok Estate for 16 years. Today, the team manages around 73 cattle, with
approximately 24 calves born each year.

The cattle are a familiar sight across the estate, but behind the scenes there’s a constant flow of
information to keep track of, from calving and pedigree records to regular weights. With five
members of staff involved, making sure everyone has access to the right information is
particularly important. That was one of the challenges that led the team to farmdrive.
Moving away from paper records

Before farmdrive, much of the estate’s livestock information was recorded on paper. That wasn’t
always practical for a team working across a large estate. Notes could be written down to deal
with later, forgotten, or mean a trip back to the office.

Now the whole team can use the app to record information while the work is being done, and
anyone can look it up when they need it. Cutting out the paperwork and the time spent chasing
up records saves Melissa around five hours a week, time she can now spend with the cattle
rather than in the office.

The full picture on every animal

With farmdrive, the team can keep everything about each animal in one profile, including
weights, family trees and medicine records.

For a pedigree Highland herd, the family tree feature makes it easy to trace each animal’s
breeding lines without digging through old paperwork. Medicine records are logged as
treatments are given, so the whole team can see what each animal has had and when.
Regular weighing is a big part of how the team monitors the cattle. For Melissa, it isn’t just about
knowing how heavy an animal is. Tracking weights over time shows how the cattle are
progressing and whether their feed is delivering the expected results, which helps the team spot
where feed is being used well and where costs could be cut.

Keeping the whole team connected

Instead of relying on bits of paper or one person remembering the details, the team at Pollok
now works off the same farm profile on the app. Everyone has a clearer picture of what’s
happening across the park.

For a five-person team looking after cattle on one of Glasgow’s best-known estates, that has
made day-to-day livestock management that bit simpler, and given Melissa back a good part of
her working week.

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