Electronic system for sheep data collection provides improved labour efficiency and accuracy

Abstract

Livestock identification has become a high priority for the Australian meat industry. Clear, accurate identification provides the opportunity to trace diseases to property of origin and to assist with the maintenance of production and breeding records. It is essential that identification is long lasting and easily read. Visually-read ear tags are commonly used for sheep identification; however operators often experience problems with tag loss, poor readability, misreading or inaccurate recording of data. A software system (Sheepone�) which is compatible with electronic tags has been developed to automatically capture sheep data and has been installed at DNRE Rutherglen and Hamilton. The system is connected to a sheep handler (Racewell�) that automatically captures and releases sheep. The handler incorporates scales (Iconix� FX21) which are programmed for automatic recording of live weight data by the software. Additional data such as fat and eye muscle measurements and reproduction status can be entered manually into the Sheepone� program. To determine the efficiency of the electronic system, it was trialed against two methods of manual data collection.