🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Sulwyn Jenkins: How smartphones have changed farm management

Keeping accurate records with AgriWebb

On the west coast of Wales, near the seaside village of Llangrannog, Sulwyn Jenkins tends to more than 1,500 sheep. There are the 1,000 Easycare ewes and 300 Welsh ewes he shepherds for Ffosyficer Farm, plus his own flock of 200 Primera ewes and the 60 rams he rears each year for Innovis.

Most of the challenges Sulwyn faces change with the seasons, whether it’s drenching for liver fluke or protecting newborn lambs against predators such as crows or foxes. Of all his tasks, one he dreaded until recently was the most relentless (not to mention boring): keeping on top of farm records.

“My record keeping before was quite bad,” Sulwyn admits with a laugh. “It was just diaries underneath the seat of the pickup.”

Diary entries can be next to useless, forgotten as quickly as they’re scribbled. Or they mean hours of extra office work, when the notes have to be transferred to an Excel spreadsheet. 

Luckily, Sulwyn found a solution to his record-keeping woes with AgriWebb. The farm management software means he can record everything that happens on his farm through the AgriWebb app on his mobile. “At least with that, I’ve always got my phone in my pocket,” Sulwyn says.

Any information Sulwyn enters on the app is synced to his AgriWebb cloud account. Now he can rest assured that his records are always accurate and up to date.

Stress-free inspections

Using AgriWebb, Sulwyn only has to hit a few buttons to pull up reports about his farm operations. It makes farm inspections a lot less painful and is a far cry from his previous “system.” 

“It was quite stressful,” says Sulwyn. “My missus would tell you that I was in a bad mood for about a week before inspections.”

After a day on the farm, Sulwyn would be stuck rifling through records. “When it came to my inspection day, I’d be deciphering my diary, trying to find all the relevant information – licences and things like that – then putting it on an Excel sheet.”

Now he knows a better way. “We shouldn’t be stressed by an inspection – it should all be there. We know we’ve done the job and done it properly; it’s just about getting it all in a simple format.”

AgriWebb does that for Sulwyn. Hit a few keys, and he can pull up any information he might need for an inspection.

Information that’s easy to share

AgriWebb also makes it simple to share information with managers, staff or advisers. It means everybody is on the same page: if Sulwyn moves a flock of ewes to a new paddock, he records the move on his phone and his manager knows where the sheep are, in real time.

“Before, if I was going away on holiday and I wanted to share information, I was writing down on a bit of paper where all the sheep were,” he says.

Not anymore. “All that information is just on the phone, and the map is there, so it’s very simple for anyone to understand,” Selwyn says. He’s found that a stock take that could’ve wasted the better part of a day is done in mere minutes.

All your records in one place

Using AgriWebb means Sulwyn has all his farm records in the palm of his hand, and adding more is as simple as unlocking his phone. “The more I use it, the more records I keep,” he says. “If we put in costs for medicines, feeders or anything else as we go along, it’ll all be there at the end of the year, and I’ll be able to get things like cost of production – it’s so simple to do.”

Interested in how AgriWebb can work for your farm? Request your demo video to learn more.