Sheep farmers have been looking for better ways to manage their flock but have had very few options to choose from, with most relying on pen and paper and the famous biscuit tin.

However, that has now changed with the introduction of Flockwatch, the sheep management app by the leading farm software company Herdwatch. It is quickly becoming the app every sheep farmer needs.

With Flockwatch, measuring the performance of a flock individually or in groups is much more streamlined.

Brothers Tom and Michael Staunton are part of the Mask View Flock, based on the shores of Lough Mask in Co. Mayo.

Michael is no stranger to the Flockwatch app, having played a major role in the creation of the brand new sheep management tool as part of the Herdwatch team.

In the video above, the Staunton brothers explained how easy it was for them to get started on the app, from inputting their flock in the app with the help of an electronic identification (EID) reader, to recording lambings, and having all of their flocks information at their fingertips.

Speaking about the impact of the app on their herd's performance, Tom said: "We’re now heading into the second half of the year so we’re looking at the weight gain of the lambs and tracking all of the lamb performance.

“We used Flockwatch to record birth weights at lambing and now we’re going to be using it to check the lambs average daily gains, so we can track the best and worst performing ewes.

"Now it’s right there on the app, it can’t be lost as it’s backed up to the cloud and you know what’s performing and what’s not performing. Very simple,” Tom concluded.

Keeping track of data can be difficult, but this has since been made easy for the Staunton brothers.

Discussing the benefits of the app's data recording, Michael said: “Coming into sale season, recording what sheep have been sold is another huge benefit in Flockwatch that we will we be using this time of year.

"We’ll now be able to keep track of all the sheep that are leaving the farm which obviously happens a lot at this time of year and it can be difficult at the best of times to know what’s what.

Michael continued: “Now we’ll be able to use Flockwatch with our EID reader to quickly scan a group of sheep that are leaving the farm, see what price we sold them for, what date they were sold and how long we had them on farm, and also giving us a good insight on how they performed.

“Before we would have had the kill out sheet or the mart docket but now we have all the information from when the lamb was born the whole way through," Michael concluded.

Flockwatch also offers additional features that are of benefit to the farmer. An example of this is generating reports based on the data recorded in the Flockwatch app.

“We can now report on all of our animals such as animals born on farm to see what animals were born this year, feed purchases reports, movements off reports and even simple weight reports,” said Michael.

Agreeing with Michael's comment, Tom said: “The Flockwatch app is really helping us save time gathering the information as it can be saved directly in the app, even if I don’t have an internet connection, whereas before I had it all over the place on bits of paper.

"I can already see that by using the app, I’m improving my efficiency on the farm and making my life easier at the end of the day.”

Before downloading the Flockwatch app, Bord Bia inspections meant that all hands were on deck in the Staunton household at the time of inspection. Going forward, the Staunton’s are looking forward to stress-free audits.

“We will be recording everything that comes from the vet and it will go straight into the app and when the audit comes around we can just simply run and print the reports from the app and hand it to the auditor, job done, there’s no preparation the night before now everything is just ready to go,” said Tom.

Flockwatch has been created by the same team who developed Herdwatch, the award-winning cattle management software used on over 17,000 farms.

Existing members find it very useful when making better on-farm decisions, while saving an average of three hours per week on paperwork.

Flockwatch will apply the same principles for sheep farmers by allowing them to record farm compliance paperwork, flock performance and health, recording individually or in groups, to help make their farm businesses more compliant and efficient.

Flockwatch allows sheep farmers to:

How to get started on Flockwatch today:

Alternatively, click here for more information.