Innovative feeder 'Zeddy' wins Southern Rural Life Innovation Award

Zeddy team members Shane Parlato and Pearse McGoughan show off the Zeddy 1250 Dry Feeder, which won the Southern Rural Life Innovation Award at the Southern Field Days recently. Photo: Nicole Sharp

Farmers wanting to know how much supplement feed their animals are eating in the paddock now have a solution.

Zeddy has designed the 1250 dry feeder, which won the Southern Rural Life Innovation Awards at the Southern Field Days. Nicole Sharp takes a closer look.

Early born calves and big eaters already have an advantage in the paddock when it comes to eating their share of supplement feed.

Zeddy has designed the perfect solution, which ensures all calves, or other animals, get their allocated amount.

Formed in 2014, Zeddy is now producing a leading range of automatic calf milk feeding systems and a range of meal feeders for calves, heifers, dairy and beef herds, goat and deer.

The Zeddy 1250 dry feeder can identify every animal by its electronic ear tag and dispense the predetermined amount of feed.

Part of the Ellison Group, Zeddy is changing the way farmers feed their animals.

Team member Pearse McGoughan said the Zeddy group was thrilled to win the Southern Rural Life Innovation Award.

''We were second at Kirwee with some other products. It's [Zeddy 1250 Dry Feeder] a great product and it's great to get the win.''

The reason for designing the feeder was about managing feeds, and it was a very good design, Mr McGoughan said.

He said he wanted to do away with troughs falling over and losing meal.

The Zeddy allowed for ''feeding high-quality feeds, and not getting any wastage and making it simple''.

In a nutshell, the Zeddy feeder has a feed bin, which has four augurs and four stalls. As the animal comes in, its eartag is read and it will dispense the allocated feed amount.

''We're trying to streamline it a bit better. With having different age groups in the same mob . . . the early calves always look better, so we can drop them down to one kilo and get the herd lines more even in growth rates,'' Mr McGoughan said.

At present, the Zeddy feeders were being leased out as there was a large amount of technology involved in the feeder and the company was continuing to work on the product.

The feeder was also being used to fatten hinds before mating, and as the farmers were feeding high-quality grain, the Zeddy feeder was making sure it wasn't wasted.

The Zeddy Dry Feeder also sends information for all parameters to the user's smartphone or computer, so the farmer is in control with less effort.