CattleScale
Weighing packs
Weighing a mob? Buy 50, 100, 200, 250 or 500 weighings up front
For iPhone and Android · from Origae
Know what that beast weighs before you back the truck up.
Photograph a beast side on. Most readings come back inside a minute with an estimated live weight, a condition score, and what the market says it's worth. No crush. No load bars. No yarding the animal to find out.
1 photoTo start
Under a minuteUsually
First one freeThen A$1.00 each
No accountNothing renews
The problem
The scale is in the yards. The cattle are in the paddock.
A crush and a set of load bars runs into thousands of dollars, and it only tells you anything once the animal is standing in it. So the honest answer, most days, is that nobody weighs the beast at all. You look over the fence and you guess.
An eye that is ten per cent out on a 500 kg cow is fifty kilograms out. At the National Processor Cow liveweight rate quoted in August 2026, that was about $180 on a single animal, and the error falls on whoever trusted it. Across a run of them it stops being a rounding difference and starts being the margin.
CattleScale is not a replacement for a certified scale, and it does not pretend to be. It is the number you did not have before, at a price that makes it worth checking.
What's new, October 2026
Packs, four languages, and a wider range when there is no scale.
All of this is already in the app on your phone. Open it and it is there. Read the full update.
Español, Português, Polski
The whole app, its results and the PDF report now come in Spanish as well as Portuguese, Polish and English. A phone set to one of those languages opens in it straight away.
Your own price, your own currency
Type what buyers near you pay per kilogram of liveweight and see the animal's value in pesos, reais, dollars or whatever you sell in. The price stays on your phone.
A wide range when there is no scale
With no ruler sheet and no marked length in the photos, the app shows a wide range, from at least 25 per cent under its estimate to 50 per cent over. We set it wide on purpose. It has not yet been tested against scale weights on Australian cattle, and the real weight can still fall outside it.
The ruler sheet can narrow the range
A printed ruler sheet beside the animal gives the app a real scale to measure from, so the range can be narrower. We have not yet tested that against scale weights. Want a sharper reading? Include it in your photos.
Four photos, more to go on
Front, both sides and rear give the app the most to go on. The app tells you how many angles are still missing before you weigh, and still weighs from one side-on photo if that is all you have.
How it works
Three steps, and the longest one is walking to the fence.
Photograph the animal side on
Square to the flank, whole body in frame. Bull, steer, cow, heifer or calf, it is the same one shot, and it is the only one the estimate cannot be made without. The front, the rear and the far side are optional, and the app counts how many of the four angles you have as you add them.
Add the ruler sheet
A photograph has no scale of its own. Print the CattleScale ruler sheet on A4 at 100%, not fit to page, and put it in the photo, clipped to a rail or held flat against the animal's shoulder, in the same plane as the animal's side. The app reads the sheet and uses it as the scale. It is optional, and we have not yet tested the narrower range against scale weights.
Read the answer
The breed, the photo check and the warnings, including any possible health or welfare concern, free and straight away, plus how wide the range is. After your free first weighing, sex, age, measurements, condition, frame, muscle, fat, health notes and the dollar figure stay hidden until you pay for that animal.
Using AI
What the model actually does with your photo.
Your photographs go to Google's Gemini, a large model that can look at pictures and describe what it sees. If Gemini returns nothing usable, OpenAI reads them instead. It infers the height at the shoulder, the body length and the heart girth, which is the chest measurement just behind the front legs. When a ruler sheet or a marked length gives it a real scale, it measures against that. With none, it leans on typical proportions for the breed, and the range is wide.
Heart girth is the one that matters. The app then runs Schaeffer's formula, the tape measure method stockmen have used on farms for a century. The app applies the same arithmetic. It just gets the two measurements from pixels instead.
Three reads, not one
Every assessment is read three separate times and the middle answer is kept. One odd reading in three is normal for these models, and taking the median throws it out instead of believing it.
Two methods, checked against each other
What the model sees is compared against what the girth formula predicts. When the two disagree, the app says so and widens the range rather than picking a favourite.
A range, not a number
You get a band around the estimated weight, wider when the evidence is thinner. The app lists what limited the reading, in plain words.
The reasons it might be wrong
Every reading lists what hurt it, in plain English: no measured scale (no ruler sheet or marked length), a poor angle, a photo that cuts off part of the animal. Told up front, not buried.
The app
Big numbers, plain words, read with one hand in full sun.
Built for a paddock, not a desk. Every control is sized for a thumb and every figure is readable at arm's length with the glare coming off the screen.
1 of 5
Around the world
CattleScale is used in over 40 countries
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Australia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Cambodia
- Canada
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Estonia
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Honduras
- Hungary
- India
- Iraq
- Ireland
- Kazakhstan
- Kosovo
- Kyrgyzstan
- Mexico
- Mongolia
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Peru
- Poland
- Romania
- Serbia
- Slovenia
- South Africa
- Tajikistan
- Timor-Leste
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
The small print, in your favour
Five things worth knowing before you download it.
Your first weighing is free
One free unlock on every install, weight and dollar figure included, so you see the whole thing work on your own cattle before you spend anything.
Works from saved photos
No signal in the back paddock? Shoot the animal with your camera and run the photos through the app when you are back in range. Saved photos read the same as fresh ones.
Kilograms and pounds
The weight is shown in both, with the heart girth and body length in centimetres so you can check the one that matters with a tape.
Today's market, dated
The dollar figure comes from MLA's daily indicators. The app shows which indicator it used and how old the figure is, and warns you when it is stale.
Nothing to remember
No account, no password, no email address.
What it costs
See the breed and every warning before you pay a cent.
The breed and the warnings, including any possible health or welfare concern, are free on every animal. If the app has the breed wrong or a warning says the photos are reading badly, you will know that before you are asked for money. Your first weighing still opens the whole reading, and that one is free.
Always free
$0
every animal, no limit
- Breed, so you can tell it is your animal
- Photo problems, including a serious warning opened for you
- Every caveat, so you can judge the reading before you buy it
- The range around the weight
One animal, one unlock. First one free
A$1.00
€0.99 in most euro countries on the App Store. €0.99 in most euro countries on the App Store. The App Store shows your local price. Google Play shows your local price, and that is the price Google Play will charge. The App Store or Google Play shows your local price.
- The estimated live weight, in kilograms and pounds
- Heart girth and body length, the two measurements the weight is built on
- An indicative dollar value, from Meat & Livestock Australia's published indicators
- The model's reasoning, in its own words, on how it reached the figure
- Body condition score on the 1 to 9 scale, with notes
- Muscle score, frame score and P8 fat
- Sex, age, coat and horns, plus shoulder height, structure and health notes
A consumable, not a subscription.
One purchase, one animal. Nothing renews, nothing expires into a plan, and there is
nothing to cancel.
Read this before you buy
It is an estimate. It is not a weigh scale.
CattleScale produces an estimate from photographs. It is not certified for trade and it has no legal standing in any transaction. Nothing is measured. The app infers dimensions from pixels and applies published formulae to those inferences. It is an informed guess with its workings shown, and it should be treated as one.
Do not use it for:
- Selling by weight. That needs a scale approved under the National Measurement Act 1960 (Cth). This is not one and cannot become one.
- Drench or drug dosing. Underdosing drives resistance and overdosing harms the animal. Weigh the animal, or ask your vet.
- Vendor declarations or NLIS records. Or any statutory or assurance scheme document.
- Veterinary decisions. The condition score and health notes are impressions from a photograph, not an examination.
The full detail is in section 4 of the Terms of Service.
Questions
The things worth asking before you download it.
How accurate is it, really?
A rough guide, and never presented as more than that. Every reading comes with a range around the estimated weight. The range is wider when the photos give the app less to work with. The printed CattleScale ruler sheet in the photo, or a known length you mark on it, gives the app a real scale to measure from, and the range can then be narrower. Without either, the range stays wide. We have not yet tested the narrower range against scale weights. The app says what limited each reading.
We have not yet tested CattleScale against scale weights on Australian cattle, so we do not publish an accuracy figure. When the app has no measured scale (no ruler sheet it could read and no length you marked), it shows a wide range, from at least 25 per cent under its estimate to at least 50 per cent over, and the real weight can still fall outside it. Want a sharper reading? Print the ruler sheet at 100% and include it in your photos.
The honest position is that it will not match a set of load bars and is not trying to. It is a rough aid, not a replacement for a scale.
How do I get a sharper reading?
Stand square to the animal's side with the whole body in frame, and hold the phone level with its chest: shooting down from above makes any animal read short. To give the photo a scale, print the CattleScale ruler sheet on A4 at 100%, not fit to page, and include it in your photos, clipped to a rail or held flat against the animal's shoulder, in the same plane as the animal's side. The app reads the sheet. You can also mark a known length on a photo.
Add the front, rear and far side views if you can. A genuinely head on front photo matters more, because chest width is squared in the weight formula. Every reading also lists what hurt it, so if it says the animal was cut off or it had no measured scale (no ruler sheet or marked length), that is what to fix on the next one.
Is the first one really free?
Yes. Every install of the app gets one free unlock, and it includes everything the
paid one does: the weight, the measurements and the dollar figure. The range around the weight is shown before you unlock. There
is no card to enter and nothing to sign up for. After that it is A$1.00 an animal,
What happens to my photographs?
Your photographs are read by an AI provider (Google's Gemini, or OpenAI as a backup) to produce the assessment. We do not store them. The provider may keep them for a time set by its own terms. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy.
Do I have to make an account?
No. There is no sign in of any kind. No name, no email address, no password. A purchase is proved by a signed token that says only "one assessment has been paid for". It carries no identity, and we could not connect it to you if we wanted to.
Is it a subscription?
No. It is a consumable: one purchase unlocks one animal. Nothing renews, nothing expires into a plan, and there is nothing to cancel. If you weigh one beast a year, you pay for one beast a year.
Where does the dollar figure come from?
From indicators published daily by Meat & Livestock Australia's National Livestock Reporting Service, which are the same figures your agent quotes. The app picks the indicator that matches the animal: National Processor Cow for a cow, National Feeder Steer for a calf or a young beast, and National Heavy Steer for everything else. It applies a dressing percentage where the indicator is quoted on carcase weight, and shows you which one it used and how old the figure is.
An indicator is a market average, not a bid. What an animal actually makes depends on the day, the buyers present and how it presents. We are not a stock agent and this is not financial advice.
What if I get a bad reading?
You will usually see it coming, because the free half of the assessment arrives first. If the breed is wrong or the warnings say the photos are poor, that is your signal not to buy the weight. Retake the photo with the printed ruler sheet in frame, or mark a known length, and try again.
Does it work outside Australia?
The app is on sale in 175 storefronts, and the weight estimate itself can be run anywhere, though we have not tested it on cattle outside Australia.
The built-in valuation uses Meat & Livestock Australia indicators and is quoted in Australian dollars. Outside Australia, type in what buyers near you pay per kilogram of liveweight and the app shows the animal's value in your own currency. That price stays on your phone.
Does it need signal in the paddock?
Yes. The photographs have to reach the model to be read, so the assessment needs a connection. If you are out of range, take the photos with your camera and run them through the app from your saved photos when you are back in signal. The app accepts saved photos as readily as fresh ones.
First one free, then a dollar an animal
Walk out, take one photo, and stop guessing.
The breed, the warnings, including any possible health or welfare concern, and your first weight are free. After that you only pay when you want the number, and by then you have already seen enough to know whether it is worth having.