In this episode of In the Shed with Trev, host Sheryl Haitana is joined by FarmRight’s Mark Cudmore, Tracey Russell and contract milker Jared Crawford to share how data and systems are embedded into the day-to-day running of large dairy operations.

Across multiple farms and thousands of cows, the challenge is not collecting more data, it is making sure it is consistent, trusted, and actually used.

Mark explains how moving to one system has changed the way he manages 10 farms and 13,000 cows, giving him clear visibility across the business and confidence in the numbers. Jared shares how Trev fits into daily routines on a 2,000 cow operation, from pasture walks through to tracking stock movements. Tracey highlights the role of consistency across teams, and how better visibility improves alignment and accountability.

This is a practical look at what it takes to make systems stick, capturing data once, using it properly, and feeding it back into better decisions. The result is stronger performance, less admin, and more time focused on what matters on farm.

If you’ve already got systems in place but they’re not being used consistently, this episode shows what it takes to make them stick day to day.

Learn more about FarmRight at farmright.co.nz

See how Trev can support your farm business at mytrev.com

In FarmRight we've always been trying to reduce waste and the time taken to input and to track things down and yeah mean it's within us but it's also with the guys on farm so really giving them the benefit of the tool as well so they can also track their own data and see what's going on on their own farms so yeah sort of like giving them that ownership.

Welcome Shed with Trev, I'm Cheryl Hightana. In this series we sit down with the people making the big calls in modern farm businesses and we unpack how strong systems, clear reporting and better data are shaping performance on farm.

Plenty of look good on paper. The real question is whether they actually get used when the shed's pumping and the week's full of jobs. In the last episode, we talked about how FarmRight thinks about digital tools before rollout, the leadership intent, the criteria, and the planning that happens well before anything hits the farm gate. Today, we're taking that thinking into the paddock and the office. This episode is about what happens when a tool like Trev is actually rolled out.

how buy-in is built, how behaviors change, and what it takes to turn a new system into a habit rather than just another job on the list. I'm Cheryl Hightana and welcome to In the Shed with Trev. This conversation is about making digital change stick on farm. And joining me today are Mark Cutmore, FarmRight Investment Manager who oversees farms and farm managers across the portfolio, Jared Crawford who is a FarmRight Contract Milker,

who's been living the rollout of Trev on the ground, and Tracy Russell, Farm Rights Operations Coordinator, who sits between farm teams and the wider business, making sure the numbers stack up. Mark and Tracy were part of the early project team that assessed Trev to decide whether it was fit for purpose for Farm Right. And Jared came into the picture a bit later when Trev landed on farm and became part of the weekly routine.

So we're going to get three perspectives today on the same tool and not always from the same starting point. Mark, if we start with you, you were part of the early group assessing Trev before it was rolled out. At that early stage, what problem was hurting enough that you knew you couldn't leave things as they were? The main one was accuracy of information and mainly around livestock. There's obviously a lot more compliance coming on farm now, whether it be from Fonterra or

the environmental side for me can and actually sort of having a really, really strong tool that could actually tell us what animals we had where at what time. And again, part of that is also we record in a lot of different places. So when it was a case of where does that information come from, which number is the right number, they might be slightly different depending on who's recorded, how they've recorded and in what spot.

And Tracy, from an operations point of view, what stood out during that early assessment phase that made Trev feel workable and practiced, not just on paper? So you'll probably see there's a bit of a common theme across the board with us, and that was having that one source of truth. So like Mark said, we'd be going into potentially five different platforms to try and find information and not knowing which was the correct information. So looking at the early stages of Trev,

we could see how we could pull all the data together into one platform. The ease of use and also making it accessible for the managers. So having the mobile app and for them just to be able to jump in whenever they were on farm or sort of like out on farm or in the office. So yeah, to begin with, Trev really sort of ticked a lot of boxes for us in that space. And Jared, you were part of that early project work, but when Trev landed on farm,

What did you think it was going to add to your plate and what were you a bit skeptical about maybe having another tool that you had to use? I guess we weren't that skeptical. know, I'm always for bringing in more technology to make things easier. So it was always good to see what else was out there. But yeah, being on a real large scale farm, it was just more about how much more work we had to do to bring livestock to and from and with a lot more feed coming in than smaller farms.

going in, coming in, stuff like that. yeah, that was the biggest thing that I was sort of a a fear about on how it was actually going to work with discipline. So let's look at how the rollout actually looked in practice. Mark, how did the rollout play across the farms in the early days? And what did those first few weeks feel like alongside everybody's normal workload? I suppose there's two things. We gave ourselves a pretty tight timeframe in terms of rolling it out to the managers. So

There was a fair bit of prep work that went from us to make sure our managers had a good understanding of why we were rolling out the tool and what the tool was for. But in terms of the uptake from our managers, it was heaps better than what we expected. Yes, we've had a previous tool that we used to capture farm data on a weekly basis, and we probably used to get, I don't know, between 30 and 50 % of managers complete that fully accurately every week.

pretty much within the first four week of our 45 farms, all 45 managed to complete the information and push it back through to pretty much what we were sort of hoping for really. So yeah. So that uptake was quite swift. What would you put it down to? Probably just giving everyone the why of what we were trying to achieve with the tool. And again, probably trying as well to bring stuff being recorded in multiple places into one place and in real time so that it was do it as it happens within that week rather than.

a stock record at end of the month, what's actually, what happened last month, feed, what actually happened last month or last quarter. So just a lot of it at the real time made it a lot easier. And what about for you, Jared, when Trev was introduced, what did you think about a normal week on farm and what changed for you? I guess nothing too much changed. You know, we all sort of knew it was coming and why it was coming. So it probably just made things that little bit easier when we got to our weekly reports.

and especially the monthly ones. you know, we could add in cows when they were coming home from the wintering block, you know, feed when it was introduced, when we were using it. yeah, it sort of just kept everything. You weren't trying to go back, you know, rake your brain, how many cows came back from the runoff, you know, over the last week. We can do it that day. So it's fresh in mind, Just extending on that, Mark, when you started seeing all this change happening, how

did you make that behaviour consistent? Because it's easy with a new tool and everyone might get bit excited about it at the start, but how do you make it a real sticky point for everybody to be consistent on what they're uploading? That's probably where we spent the majority of our time with that initial rollout was going back through and actually making sure what people were recording was to the standards that we're expecting. So we held a reasonable amount of accountability in the early stages, not just at a farm manager level, but

at our ops managers and right through to the consultants and IMs. So everyone's owning their own part in terms of this is the bit of information that we want and this is how we want it. So it was just that follow up in those early stages and that still continues now. But ultimately it was just making sure that we hold people to account and ourselves that we're following up on that information. So was it really just about setting some expectations of what was required from day to day or week to week? Correct, yeah. Day to day, week to week and

just so that there was a why to why they were doing it. So it wasn't just a case of we do it because we want that information, but actually the managers themselves can actually get something back from the information that they're recording. Looking back, what do you think you got right first and what needed adjusting once the team were actually using it? What did we get right first? I think our timing of the rollout was pretty good. At the end of the season, after the majority of the cows have been sold off farm,

was probably a reasonably easy point in terms of not a lot of action in terms of sales. So in terms of that, that was good. That also had probably a negative, a lot of the stuff that we were going to learn later on in terms of cows coming back from winter grazing, who had the ownership of those animals, whether that sort of fit in the system. Our biggest challenge was probably getting guys to understand that the ownership of the cows stays with you. Then it was just a case of making sure you knew whether they were grazing on farm or off farm.

The bit that we underestimated is how much new learning there would be at a busy time year over carving. That's always the tricky part about such seasonal businesses is when you introduce something that's going to need a learned behaviour and when staff are already busy with their day to day jobs. Tracey, when Trev's working properly, what did you notice coming through the office? Were you chasing people for less information? Were there fewer surprises in the monthly reports?

How has it impacted business from your point of view? Yeah, so for me, it's been a huge impact. Just having the visibility sort of straight away, so I can jump in any time. So in our previous system, the monthly report was sort of where I got all the data from, and it was not consistent. You couldn't take it as being an accurate recording of information on farm. It was very clunky, so the farm managers always struggled with that. So there was always that chasing and follow up. So now,

Yeah, we can jump into Trev anytime. I can keep track of the livestock on a weekly daily basis as opposed to waiting every month. So if I am needing to make adjustments or we're just needing to correct anything, we can do that then and there within that week as opposed to waiting for a month or a quarter where we've got to go backwards and try and fix things. Yes, the managers really came on board when we, like we've always asked them to submit data on a Wednesday, but.

Like Mark had said earlier, there was never that consistency. And since we've had this Trev rollout, the guys have really come on board and they really strive to get that data to us on a Wednesday. So that's been a huge game changer as opposed to chasing them every week. Mark, how influential has Trev been in terms of your farm managers being able to look across to the other farms with live data and be benchmarking themselves? Are they doing that?

Yeah, so I suppose in terms of the way we use the TRED platform is we've sort of probably always done that ourselves with our internal farm data system that we had. But this platform here, we've been able to capture more data around what is is happening on farm and probably more realistic in terms of some of the numbers that come through. There's less opportunity for someone to sort of stick in a hard coded number that they've potentially thought off off the top of head versus these are my actual numbers. This is where the information is gathered from.

around eight full-time staff there. So I guess it was just, you know, like Mark said before, you know, telling the guys the why. And then once the app sort of came out, sitting down with them and showing them as well as the online sort of video training sessions, having them be involved with that as well. And then just sort of going through it, getting the basics first, you know.

cow movements and feed into juice was probably the main ones we started with with the guys. So after they saw that, it was pretty easy and they couldn't really stuff anything up because I sort of in the background could go for and just double check if anything was added twice or anything like that before I submitted. So it wasn't like once it's in there, it's done sort of things. So yeah, gave them a bit of confidence. They can put it around. If it wasn't quite right, we could go back in.

and make sure everyone was on the same page. If we're talking about why it was so easy for your team to take up, would you describe Trev as user-friendly in terms of an app or a system to use for all the staff? And like you said, you can obviously come in and update things or correct things when you need to. Is that data quite visible for you and your staff? Yeah, yeah. So obviously the apps, all the guys that got the app on their phones, which is pretty easy to use.

You know, just open it up and add the grain come in or whatever. And then, yeah, on our desktop at the shed as well, we've just got the Tre website ready. you know, guys can go on and check that for pasture wedges or anything like that. Just to double check all that sort of stuff as well. So very easy, very simple way they set it up. And on the flip side, are you using Trev to help you in your day-to-day decisions? You know, now that you're all on the same page.

Yeah, so, you know, the main thing was doing all our pasture walks and everything on that as well. the guys can go on there and look at, you know, what's been happening that week or growth rates and everything along those lines as well. What would have made you push back or stop using a tool like Trev if it wasn't working for you? I guess the only thing is, you know, like a lot of stuff that gets chucked at you, yeah, sort of, as long as the information that's coming back to you is good.

You know, there's a lot of times where you're putting information and probably was like that in the past where you're putting information in a lot of different platforms, but you can't really get it all back together in one simple way to hand out to the guys and explain to your team why we're doing this. yeah, having it all on that one platform makes it a lot simpler. you feel it's helped having to repeat putting data into different places? Yeah.

Yeah, we only use this as our main, you know, weekly and monthly. So now we're not having to do it on multiple. So yeah, having all that information there is a lot easier. What about you, Mark? How has it made your job easier in terms of looking across the different farms in your portfolio and monitoring their farm performance? I think probably the biggest thing is actually, it's that case that everything's in at one place. It's in a concise place and the accuracy of it.

is knowing that it's done weekly is there's more trust in the data. So it is now, you know, when we're working through stuff or I'm trying to sense check information or trying to find out some stock numbers and things like that across my portfolio, there is that only that one spot that I need to go. And that's the one that I know I can trust around what's accurate on farm versus some of the other places where, you know, say, well, where did that number come from? Was it manually input by someone? Was there any human error behind it? So, you know, there's a nice enough.

checks and balances within the Trev system that makes sure you actually can't get beyond a point if something doesn't add up. Just knowing that that information is there to make good quality decisions is huge. So where can you go from here? Are there other opportunities within the platform that you can keep up skilling the team in and being able to get more insights? Yeah, so I suppose at this stage the main functionality that we've used it for is around the feeding and stock numbers. We've also used it for sort of task management in terms of our monthly commentary.

around what's going on on farm, but there are some really good platforms in there around task management for irrigation, anything that you can have on farm, animal health treatment. it's using the ability to use that platform to track other things. The other thing that it's really helped out with us is just the integration between not just our dairy farms, but our runoff blocks as well. That's probably one of those big gaps that it also helped close in terms of being able to manage animals on two different blocks as a stock class, but the ownership has stayed with dairy farm.

and transfers between those farms has been really, really good around managing stock transfers and stuff. A question both for you, Mark and Jared. How important is having this technology when you're dealing at scale? For me, it's pretty crucial. I say, look, across the group, the 10 dairy farms that I've got, it's roughly 13,000 cows and all of them have young stock attached. We re-ed 2,500 bull calves that go up to the North Island, coming from multiple different places.

going to multiple different places and then ending up in one place. This year, our management of that with the treed system has been relatively seamless. And even if there has been something that hasn't quite lined up, we've been able to find it really quickly and easily based on the fact that we can see every farm that we've got in the one spot. So the scale and actually doing that at scale has been huge. It sounds like it might've been a bit stressful this year then. Definitely around the management of where our ball curves have ended up has been, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, and on sort of my front from our large-scale farming sort of side, it's, you know, the biggest thing was tracking those cows coming back from wintering. So knowing, you know, exactly where the cows were, how many were brought home, you know, all our mobs. had a clear, concise number around, yeah, you who's on farm, who wasn't. And then again, with calves, moving calves off, getting them away, like Mark said, you know, it's, yeah, it just made everything, you know, a lot more.

lot more easier in knowing exactly what numbers are actually in the system. What about you Tracy? Once Trev was live, how has it made your job easier? And what about that ongoing support you get from a digital tool like Trev? How important is that for you? Sort of in farm right, we've always been trying to reduce waste and the time taken to input and to track things down. you know, mean, it's within us, but it's also with the guys on farm.

So really giving them the benefit of the tool as well. So they can also track their own data and see what's going on on their own farms. yeah, sort of like giving them that ownership. And that's really driven sort of, I guess, the behaviors and that really flows through to what I see and to sort of like my processes on a weekly and monthly basis. So it's a really win-win situation for both of us. For me, just being able to, like I said earlier, just get in.

on a daily basis if I need to to track data. The guys are sort of, now that they know they can get the information in easily, and it's sort of like the uptake and the tool is being huge. And they can also reach out if they need to. So they know it's easy just to pick up the phone and I can jump in straight away. Mark can do the same. So we're there on a daily basis. We can just jump in and support them with any questions or anything they're trying to do within the tool.

And is it easy enough to communicate with the team within the tool as you're using it? Yeah, definitely. So we can jump on Teams calls or we can share screens. And I know Mark's even been making his own little sort of videos to help out where needed. So it's really been a combined effort sort of across the board for us all to, the more we use the tool, the more we learn about it and the more we can support each other.

Mark, now that the data is coming in more consistently, what patterns are starting to stand out? The fact that we always had a tool that we were sort of using to capture data on a weekly basis anyway, the habits are probably stored there. It's probably just that knowing that what is coming through is accurate. That's the biggest difference in terms of what we've sort of noticed around that understanding of regular inputting of information on a weekly basis, just to increase that accuracy.

relative to the old system that we used to use. So like I say, our guys specifically in Canterbury were really, really good at getting their farm data in. And they're okay, it's consistent across the farms in terms of how that data comes through and the information we're getting out of it. So that accuracy, how does that give you more confidence to make decisions on a more timely manner? I think for one, it saves time. Like Tracey said before, is that those big cases when you are

trying to find out across the board to get the synergies of a big group is you do have to have that line of sight of where our total numbers are sitting. Whether it's for Youngstock, have I got enough for Youngstock across the group? Who hasn't got enough? Who has that ability to actually jump onto the system and get a real clear line of sight of our total numbers? Which farms need topped up in terms of where their deficits are? Or how many have we got as a group in terms of our surplus as a sale option? That has definitely made those decisions a lot easier. And I'm sure going through into

the back end now where we're getting some scanning results and things like that come through, we'll have a lot greater accurate information around where each individual farm is sitting for us to help them make decisions, not just for us to make decisions, but for them to go on farm to actually know where their numbers are so they can work out their killing plans and that sort of thing. Tracey, we've talked a lot about how it's making life easier for farm managers and being able to see that data. How much easier is it making

life for you to be able to fill compliance information or give information along to processes or other organisations that need it? Yeah, it's been a huge game changer as far as compliance and auditing purposes. So there are quite a few external stakeholders that we have to report to on a yearly basis. And previously we were having to go into potentially three or four different platforms to gather data and

Sometimes we were tracking the same data in different platforms and we had variances. So it was always a case of, we don't actually know which is our truth. So yeah, like I said, that's been a huge game changer because if everything's sitting in one platform, we're constantly checking, adjusting and confirming these figures. So we know now that what we're sending out at the other end for compliance, they're reporting to our internal and external stakeholders. We know that that data is accurate.

because we know it's all just coming into one place and coming out of one place. So if there's some businesses or farmers out there listening to this wondering whether it's worth investing in a tool like Trev. Mark, what would your advice be to farmers, especially around the best way to roll out a technology like this and around the timing and how to get your team on board? Firstly, the big one is actually understanding what do you want first? So what is the information you want?

and then actually understanding what parts of the tool can you actually use to get that information. And that's probably where our journey started with the whole TRIB process was actually, know, what do we actually want? And then as I understand that TRIB had the capacity to do what we wanted and more. So we're using that to create your standards around the information that you want to gather for your farms teams. It's understanding what you want is the critical part and then selling that why story to get the information off the farm managers.

And if you did it again, would you roll it out at the same time of the season? Probably would. I think it's still a relatively easy time of year to roll it out. I don't think regardless of how you roll it out, you're not going to come up against challenges of understanding. And like always, Kiwis are very, very good at finding ways to actually improve things that are on there. So even just the use by the farm managers actually caught us a lot from the tool that have actually created new standards in terms of how we expect things to be done.

Once someone does something to a gold standard, it's like we can get everyone to do that. so I wouldn't change the time. think probably if anything, our rollout process was probably only about a two week worth of planning before we rolled it out on the actual tree once we were going to use that as a tool. Probably would have got a few more managers involved in the early stages, which would have just helped in terms of the capacity around who actually knew the ins and outs of the tool to actually help with training and accountability as you go forward. What about you, Jared?

What would your advice be to other farm managers out there who are looking at taking up Trev? Definitely go ahead and do it. It's no extra work anyway. Most people are doing it, but they're just doing it on multiple different platforms and all over the place. yeah, having it as easy one app, chuck it in on the daily, weekly. Yeah, just it makes sense really. yeah, definitely no reservations and getting other people onto it.

And what about you Tracy, to all those other ops managers out there pulling their hair out, trying to get clean data off farms, it's obviously changed your life quite a bit. Yeah, I think it's been a game changer. It's a no brainer really. If you want to capture all of your farm data in one platform, then I can definitely give it the thumbs up there. Having everything in one place, know, less chance of errors. It's easy to track stuff. Definitely less stress in the office and I'm sure there's less stress on farm.

Putting the process together might take a bit of time, but in the end you get all that time back. Definitely worth it. Which is interesting because some people might look at it and think it's more work getting a new tool like this, but would you all say that in the long run it ends up being less work and less time? It's a lot less chunky when you're recording stuff as it happens on a weekly basis rather than getting to the end of a season and actually trying to work back through.

where is all this information? So yeah, record it as it happens. It takes a minute to record a task, if that, and what, 10, 15 minutes on a weekly basis to sense check your information. So it's a pretty quick process. Last question to you, Mark. What are you hoping to get out of Treva in the next coming season? I suppose now that we've got all of our farms recording everything pretty much identically, is actually seeing where do they all sit around our metrics, whether it's our wastage, whether it's our greenhouse gases.

whether it's our feed inputs, that's going to be a really, really good starting point where we've got everyone recording everything in the same spot to the same standard. It's probably going to be our first year of a really good, we know that all the information is going to be recorded in the same spot to actually give a really good comparison. Brilliant. So what's really come through is that a tool like Trev only works when the behavior changes around it and you get buy-in from everybody. The big takeaway here is that the rollout is not the finish line.

Support, reinforcement and small adjustments are what turn a new tool into a habit that actually earns its place on farm. A big thanks to Mark Cudmore, Jared Crawford and Tracy Russell for sharing what this looks like in practice and being honest about what has worked and what needs adjusting. I'm Cheryl Hightana and this has been In The Shed with Trev. Thanks for listening.

Thanks to every guest who stepped into the shed and shared their experience. Ours is an industry that backs each other. The willingness to share is what keeps lifting the standard across modern farm businesses. I hope you've taken something practical away from these conversations and if you're looking for clearer reporting and stronger systems to back your next big call, head to mytrev.com. We'll be back soon.

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