Shannon Speight changes the game for red meat industry
Pregnancy-scanning heifers, juggling toddlers and building powerful data-analysis software for the cattle industry is all in a day’s work for this livestock vet and young mum from Mareeba.
PASSIONATE livestock vet Shannon Speight has created a data analysis tool that will be a game-changer for Northern Australia’s red meat industry.
The 29-year-old from Mareeba has travelled more than 60,000km across Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia as co-ordinator of a large-scale cattle genetics project.
Her “grunt work” involved pregnancy-testing more than 30,000 heifers during three years in the role. It was months on the road, long days in cattle yards, and most of her time spent with her arm up cows’ bums.
A bonus of the job was that she had frank discussions with pastoralists.
She discovered they were sitting on a wealth of information – genetic measurements, livestock weights, feed choices and carcass assessments going back years – but had no way to accurately track how decisions along their supply chain directly influenced the value of their end product.
“I had people coming to me with 10 years of data stored on their hard drives slowing down their computers, and on USB drives, saying ‘what do I do with it?’,” said Shannon, who juggles work with building her own herd with her husband, Luke, and taking care of her two young sons, two-month-old Fred and Russell, 1.
The producers were desperate for software that could provide insight about what choices boosted productivity and profits.
“It didn’t matter if they were really into genetics or just starting to collect weight data, there was a similar problem across the board,” Shannon said. “I thought maybe I’m the person who can solve this, because no one else is putting their hand up.”
Shannon teamed up a year ago with fellow cattle woman Emma Black, originally from Longreach, to launch a software solution called Black Box Co, which analyses historical data to identify decisions that lead to price penalties or premiums.
Similar to the way ugly vegetables are rejected by some retailers, beef carcasses that don’t meet stringent guidelines for colour, weight, fat and other desirable traits may be severely discounted by buyers.
“For one pastoral company, we were able to outline where they had lost $750,000 in carcass discounts,” she said. “Unless you are on top of your data and analysing it, you don’t see that until you have lost it.”
Shannon is a nominee in The Weekly Times Shine Awards, supported by Harvey Norman.
The awards celebrate the achievements of rural women. If you know a rural woman whose story deserves to be told, nominate her now.
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