The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has announced a new pilot project called ‘Mart€xpress’, which is a new mart trading feature available on the HerdPlus app.
The new project aims to create greater efficiency with buying and selling animals through the ICOS mart network.
Pilot phase
The project is currently in its pilot phase and has only been made available to a limited number of users.
Initially, the app will only facilitate the selling and purchasing of calves from the dairy herd but the federation hopes that other categories will eventually be added in future versions of the service.
How does it work?
Through the HerdPlus app, farmers have the option to choose which mart they wish to market their animals through before nominating the animals that they wish to sell.
The mart will receive this information and contact the herd owner to negotiate a date and time for the animals to be delivered to the facility.
The mart will then facilitate the sale of the animals between buyer and seller.
Progress
To date, over 1,200 calves have been sold through the new piece of technology and ICBF said that they are constantly researching means of evolving the service to further increase its efficiency.
At the time of writing, no date has been set for when the feature will be made available to all HerdPlus members.
