Improving Livestock Records with Mark Ritchie from Delatite Station

With Jock Lawrence

Mark Ritchie came back to the family farm in 1990, and after trying many different livestock record-keeping systems, has come to find Mobble to be the perfect solution.

“[Delatite Station] has been in the family since 1902, and roughly speaking, we manage 6500 acres, and 20% of that is leased. It’s a family business, my wife and I manage and own it.”

“I came back onto the farm in 1990 after being city-based and working in IT... It was a very conventionally run farm back then, and like most farms, a lot has changed in the last 30 years. We moved to a self-replacing fine wool merino flock changed the direction of our beef herd and generally have had a major focus on improving our productivity.”

Mark says he has previously struggled to keep accurate livestock records because there weren’t suitable record-keeping options available. He’s tried everything from keeping a spreadsheet to other farm management software and says the beauty of Mobble’s Livestock Farm Management software is its simplicity.

“We’ve tried several different products over the years, from spreadsheets to farm management software and have now ended up with Mobble.”

“We found that others were too complicated – it was very easy to say ‘oh no, I’ll do that at the end of the day’ or ‘I’ll update all of that at the end of the week’ and it’s too late then. Before you know it, you’ve got a lot of things out of date and if you lose confidence in the numbers, then what’s the point?.”

“With Mobble, we really engage with keeping it up to date because it is so easy to use - we find it’s really fast, it’s simple, it’s quick, and you can get the information up within seconds."

“What I love about Mobble is that it’s livestock specific and has a real focus on keeping it simple, and I think the other guys are trying to be everything for everyone. Sometimes less is more, and you guys are aware of that.”

“We also really like the filtering process – to be able to go in and say ‘where are all the green tag heifers, what paddocks are they all in’ for example, and bang, straight up, it all comes up within seconds. That’s powerful."

“The Mobble team have been very good, I feel like I can shoot off an email or a text and things get done quickly.”

Mark has been with Mobble since early 2020. His feedback has had a fantastic impact on the product. For that, we say thank you to Mark Ritchie for his time and energy - from the Mobble team 👍

More info on Mobble here.