Raglan start-up Scanabull uses iPhone and AI app to replace cattle scales
Scanabull uses the LiDAR sensor built into an iPhone Max or Pro Max.
A Raglan start-up is claiming a world-first for its cattle-weighing technology, which it bills as cheaper and easier than existing techniques.
Scanabull uses the LiDAR (light detection and ranging) sensor built into Apple’s Pro and Pro Max versions of the iPhone, which emits up to 150,000 pulses of laser light per second, to take a 3D scan of an animal.
AI is then used to process the image in Scanabull’s WeighApp to give a farmer the animal’s weight.
Founder Dan Bull says Scanabull can be used to assess an animal’s weight as it moves naturally (or is charging around in a herd, see the video below), with a 95% accuracy target. Scanabull’s software has been trained on 100,000 data points. The AI will get more and more accurate over time, Bull says.
Cattle scales have gone high-tech in recent years, with Kiwi companies like Gallagher Group and Tru-Test releasing models that automatically update information about an animal in an app, or held in an RFID tag clipped to its ear.
But Bull says scales are still labour and time-intensive.
In some cases, the stress of yarding can even result in short-term weight loss, making frequent weighing counterproductive, he says.
He also promises that Scanabull will be a lot cheaper than industrial scales.
How much cheaper? The price won’t be finalised until closer to Scanabull’s official launch at Fieldays 2026 in June.
The start-up has just raised $1.1 million in seed funding, which will be used to get Scanabull - currently being tested on farms - into shape for its commercial launch at Mystery Creek.
Bull (“my surname is nominally determinative” he quips to the Herald), founded Scanabull in April 2024. He was quickly joined by Paul Sealock (founding engineer), Daniel Stuart-Jones (chief technology officer) and Ursula Haywood (chief commercial officer).
“We’re turning the beef industry into the dairy industry,” Bull told the Herald.
“If a cow comes in and produces more milk, a dairy farmer can say ‘I’ve done a good job today’,” Bull says.
“In the beef industry, they don’t know what’s going on in the paddock.”
Haywood says the non-invasive Scanabull, which saves results to a digital dashboard, is easy enough to be used every day. The start-up is also working on a shoebox-sized piece of hardware, designed to sit by a trough or a gate, for automated scans. The is for a Fieldays 2027 release.
According to Bull, it’s not just farmers who are in the dark about their stock.
“The meat industry is a $100-billion industry with minimal supply chain knowledge,” he says.
Scanabull has partnered with Silver Fern Farms to develop a system to share cattle scan data with beef processors and suppliers, so they know what’s on the way.
Earlier this month, Silver Fern hosted Scanabull at the Wanaka A&P show. How will the data sharing be monetised? Bull says that’s a work in progress.
Haywood says Scanabull got strong reaction in Wanaka, in keeping with its on-farm trials: “It’s pretty exciting getting it into people’s hands and seeing their reaction when they use it and say, ‘Wow, this is just, this is gonna, this is gonna be a game changer’.”
Future versions of the technology will extend beyond liveweight measurement to include additional livestock metrics such as carcass weight prediction and body condition scoring.
Today, Scanabull can process spatial data around 30 times per second, allowing the system to deliver a weight estimate in roughly one second. All of the AI processing takes place on the iPhone, for speed and security.
The system is currently over 93% accurate on individuals, but much more accurate at the mob level.
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Accuracy is improving as Scanabull gathers more data. Bull says the aim is 95% by the Fieldays launch - and he pitches that as better than the no-weighing used in many cases where it’s too much hassle, or a farm that just doesn’t have scales.
“Many animals are bought and sold based on visual estimates rather than objective measurements. When those estimates are wrong, it can result in significant financial differences for farmers, traders and processors,” says the founder, who grew up on a farm before studying machine learning (a form of AI) for his post-grad science degree at Waikato.
Where the money came from
On-farm trials have seen requests for Scanabull to measure and weigh sheep and chickens, too. For now, that’s on the radar.
The $1.1m round was led by Sprout Agritech, with support from Enterprise Angels and Callaghan Innovation’s Deep Tech Incubator programme (being taken over by MBIE as Callaghan is wound down).
As well as prepping for the mid-June launch, the funds will be used for a push across the Tasman by year’s end, Bull says.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.