Clean Chicken and Co. is a small livestock facility in Elk River, Minnesota. They process goats, lambs, and chickens for providers across their region. Their current operation runs on an outdated, difficult-to-use database system, and grading is done entirely by eye, with different associates evaluating animals and risk delivering different grading cost standards for their customers.
The grades determine what the facility pays their providers for each animal. With no reproducible criteria and no paper trail, providers have no way to understand why one animal may be worth more on a different day. It's a trust problem as much as a consistency problem, and most small facilities in the region faces the same issue.
Beef cattle don't have this issue. USDA yield grading gives cattle operations a standardized, measurement-based system that's consistent across facilities and inspectors. Nothing equivalent exists for goats and lambs. We set out to build it.
Goat and lamb grading is done by eye. Different people, different angles, different results. No measurements, no documentation, no way for providers to verify or dispute a grade.
USDA yield grades use standardized body measurements with ribeye area, fat thickness, carcass weight, to produce consistent, reproducible scores. The system works because it removes subjectivity.
Camera-based body measurement using computer vision. Three angles, automated segmentation, careful calibration, and a grade with documented reasoning. Consistent every time, hands-free, with a receipt for every animal.
Livestock management across species. Track animals, manage providers, record grades, and run daily operations from a dashboard served through CloudFront.
Computer vision pipeline across a Raspberry Pi and EC2. Three camera angles, YOLO segmentation, calibrated measurements, USDA-style grade in under 5 seconds.
