How To Monitor Livestock During Birthing Season

Did you know that the world’s most expensive sheep was sold at a Scottish livestock auction in Lanark back in August for an eye-watering £365,000?

The average cost of a lamb in the UK is usually around £100. For reference, the average cost of a UK home is currently around £256,000.

While it’s fair to say that the typical livestock farmer will not be investing ‘dream-home’ levels of cash into a single beast, it is worth noting that a farmers flock will often be worth many tens of thousands of pounds and much like any valuable asset, the threats of loss, theft and security should be of the utmost importance.

A Difficult Time For Farmers

Typically the peak birthing times are between February and April although some farms lamb before Christmas and it can be a very hectic time during that entire period. Especially as the end of February usually marks calving season, this marks a run of 3 to 4 months of constant work, day and night, to contend with.

As any livestock farmer will know, lambing and calving is exhausting. It requires around-the-clock attention and March is usually the busiest time of the year. Sleepless nights are a given and lambs will not wait to come out at a convenient time. It’s a fraught, stressful, few months.

But even after the given birthing time frame, the hazards to the newly-born livestock and lambs do not stop as protection from threats such as foxes, crows and indeed humans are a necessity.

Introducing… The LambCam.

Safe Security Solutions is a security company specialising in perimeter security, based in Lincolnshire. It may come as no surprise that living and working in a rural area, we work closely with the farming community, providing custom security for farms and estates with many thousands (often millions) of pounds of assets and equipment.

It may be more of a surprise that some of our innovative farmers have been requesting our services to help with the birthing season.

Necessity is the mother of invention (or so they say) and we’ve found an unusual application for our SafeSiteCam CCTV systems in the form of monitoring herds and flocks. Unlike standard CCTV systems, the SafeSiteCam uses artificial intelligence systems to set an invisible perimeter around any area you wish to monitor. This allows the live feed to alert you any time there is a threat or an event happening in that given area without needless false alarms and false-positive triggers. This can include births.

It goes a step beyond this, though: You can specify the area you wish to observe, and set up auto-responses for any form of intrusion, (be it human or fox) with a recorded message and automated lighting built right into the camera. This takes care of external threats without the need to rush to scene and take action, which can often be too late.

The other unlikely benefit has been the ability to monitor Ewes or herds, during the birthing season.

We understand that it can be very difficult working blind, with very little sleep and having to pay many essential visits on the livestock to check their well-being, whilst you could be in bed counting sheep (sorry). With the SafeSiteCam you can monitor the area of activity from the comfort of your bed, sofa, comfy chair or portacabin, checking as and when you feel is necessary, safe in the knowledge that you will be automatically alerted if an event takes place.

It is literally life-saving and cuts the cost of around-the-clock help required by farm staff with the added benefit of allowing that little bit of extra rest that is much-needed during this exhausting time.

Here When You Need Us.

Unlike most security companies, Safe Security Solutions puts our client’s needs before our own income. We understand that farms have a lot of machinery and systems which only see use for a handful of months of the year… We see no need for you to be paying huge up-front costs for a CCTV system that is only needed for a limited time frame.

The SafeSiteCam or “LambCam” system comes with no installation charges, simple 3, 6, 12 or 24-month leasing contracts and you can add any optional-extra you require such as floodlights, beacons or sirens. You can choose the hours you need it to operate, the area you wish to monitor, the number of cameras required and we can set the entire system up for you and take it away until the next year, when it will be required once more.

It’s been a difficult year for farming and industry in general so if we, as a company, can make things a little easier during the most challenging times, we’ll be more than happy to do so.

We specialise in stopping intrusions but the applications for our systems goes far beyond that.

So whether you’re looking to protect your livestock, your lambs or your assets, feel free to get in touch and see how we can help your farm.