New livestock EID measures announced by Michael Gove

Lovegoodstock · Apr 12, 2018

The Beef said:
Sorry @Lovegoodstock you did say your system of farming, I respect that people have their own systems which can be 100% reliable for them.
I hope the point I was trying to make can be the focus.
Having said that systems which are common to all will be useful. When calves go to rearers then to growers/graziers then maybe to finishers - if we all have our own systems then the passing of information up and down the chain is rendered impossible.

Surely a system which embraced the passing of info between partners* in the production of a beast would be beneficial?

* All people in the production chain need to earn a shilling - we need to get away from the few who shift their problems onto the next keeper without a second thought.

That's a relief I thought I was getting a telling off!! No not used it at all, not atall against it, and as you pointed out, for those that say, rear calves, sell on to growers and then on to finishers, performance figures should be rewarded, keeping a beast 2/3 months longer to weigh maybe 50 kilo lighter will make the difference to being profitable or losing per beast obviously. I am a store cattle producer, have 250 cows, changing policy but have gone for muscled calves that sell at a premium. Calving interval is a month on from perfect, well 3 weeks, I calve all year round as on my own, and 80 year old parents, 3 weeks costs yes, told inefficient, yes, but feed cheaper, way cheaper in dry period, keep cattle leaner than some, so long as colostrum is plentiful and adequate im happy. Found losses during calving well under average stats, normally buy in 300 ewe lambs to sell as lambed shearlings, sell 50% lambs at 12 weeks at mean average 37 kilo, rest reared twins and weaned early to recover and lambs sold as stores, ewe flock lambed 2 more years where uncrept lambs sold normally at 13 weeks at 21k dw, bar disaster this year hope to sell 1 .73 lambs per tupped ewe, average for last 3 years, I don't have time to run through assessing weight gains, but right behind you in that if your performance is average or poor, then time should be made, or has to be made, but when not keeping a sheep for more than 3 lambings,and not keeping a closed flock, and having repeat customers for years on end, I cant see thee point for me individually. Where we are hopeless as an industry is honesty, I believe, if you record and you are well above or below in weight gains or whatever it should be posted, to see a benefit for others, to see where you should be at, with an element of variation with pat of country, but I do believe we are great at striving for one up manship, hope that makes sense, that if someone posts there lambs average a daily lw gain of 400g and they are only doing 200g, they think they ought to put 300g so don't look bad, same as there are plenty and we all know it that calve are registered a month late so they "look bigger" I really believe we don't and have no interest in working together, maybe wrong

Kiwi Pete · Apr 12, 2018

Bury the Trash said:
So do 2.5% of your tags misfire then ? or was that a rarer occassion ?

they should be checked in someform of quality control from the manufacturer ir. no exscuse really as it can cause a lot of bother.

In my experience with about 2000 cattle tags I have never had a dud one, in saying that I have crushed a few by loading them incorrectly into the tagger, there is a little bump on ours and much pressure on it will render the chip useless, like anything else you find the best lessons the hard way.

Dead Rabbits said:
Why is your government so obsessed with tracking livestock? It is definitely not because the consumer demands it.

Because it helps justify a whole heap of jobs is my pick. Fair enough if it was going to be used to sort out tb or other diseases but that won't happen, it will just be less of an issue as cattle farms get fewer and fewer.
Interesting point about detailed labelling, and who that actually suits; the truth about farming is really hardly worth advertising IMO : just how descriptive should it be?

"This beef released 10kg of topsoil into the ocean per kilo"
"This beef resulted in 15kg of CO2 emmissions per kilo"

Not trying to be a cleverclogs but folk should be careful what it is they wish for, because the type of consumer that does care tends to be fairly hard to impress by simple country-of-origin labelling, they would possibly like to know more about how much it cost our planet, in order to make the decision.

That group is the growing market, in global terms anyway, not trying at all to push my own agenda (it is beginning to push itself without any help) and that is one thing that traceability will not fix. Only farmers can fix that.

Henarar · Apr 12, 2018

Lovegoodstock said:
That's a relief I thought I was getting a telling off!! No not used it at all, not atall against it, and as you pointed out, for those that say, rear calves, sell on to growers and then on to finishers, performance figures should be rewarded, keeping a beast 2/3 months longer to weigh maybe 50 kilo lighter will make the difference to being profitable or losing per beast obviously. I am a store cattle producer, have 250 cows, changing policy but have gone for muscled calves that sell at a premium. Calving interval is a month on from perfect, well 3 weeks, I calve all year round as on my own, and 80 year old parents, 3 weeks costs yes, told inefficient, yes, but feed cheaper, way cheaper in dry period, keep cattle leaner than some, so long as colostrum is plentiful and adequate im happy. Found losses during calving well under average stats, normally buy in 300 ewe lambs to sell as lambed shearlings, sell 50% lambs at 12 weeks at mean average 37 kilo, rest reared twins and weaned early to recover and lambs sold as stores, ewe flock lambed 2 more years where uncrept lambs sold normally at 13 weeks at 21k dw, bar disaster this year hope to sell 1 .73 lambs per tupped ewe, average for last 3 years, I don't have time to run through assessing weight gains, but right behind you in that if your performance is average or poor, then time should be made, or has to be made, but when not keeping a sheep for more than 3 lambings,and not keeping a closed flock, and having repeat customers for years on end, I cant see thee point for me individually. Where we are hopeless as an industry is honesty, I believe, if you record and you are well above or below in weight gains or whatever it should be posted, to see a benefit for others, to see where you should be at, with an element of variation with pat of country, but I do believe we are great at striving for one up manship, hope that makes sense, that if someone posts there lambs average a daily lw gain of 400g and they are only doing 200g, they think they ought to put 300g so don't look bad, same as there are plenty and we all know it that calve are registered a month late so they "look bigger" I really believe we don't and have no interest in working together, maybe wrong

LWG itself is not important, if the chap that is getting 400g a day but losing money it is nothing for the chap that is getting 200g a day and making money to aspire to,
profit is the important figure everything else is just numbers

holwellcourtfarm · Apr 12, 2018

Dead Rabbits said:
Why is your government so obsessed with tracking livestock? It is definitely not because the consumer demands it.

Having seen the UK industry go through BSE, F&M and uncontrolled TB I think robust traceability of the live animal is essential. It's in our own interests. The current system provides this so long as everyone follows the rules. Those who don't (swapping identities between animals) are exhibiting total failure of management and should face harsh penalties.

EID has clear management benefits for those interested in them (i've considered it for years) but doesn't, in itself, improve traceability.

Traceability beyond the farm gate is another matter. If compete "farm to fork" traceability is seen as politically important then it should be legislated into existence with equal rigour. If it's not that important then stop going on about it and stop the retailers telling the primary producers that they need it.

Gulli · Apr 12, 2018

Kiwi Pete said:
In my experience with about 2000 cattle tags I have never had a dud one, in saying that I have crushed a few by loading them incorrectly into the tagger, there is a little bump on ours and much pressure on it will render the chip useless, like anything else you find the best lessons the hard way.

Because it helps justify a whole heap of jobs is my pick. Fair enough if it was going to be used to sort out tb or other diseases but that won't happen, it will just be less of an issue as cattle farms get fewer and fewer.
Interesting point about detailed labelling, and who that actually suits; the truth about farming is really hardly worth advertising IMO : just how descriptive should it be?

"This beef released 10kg of topsoil into the ocean per kilo"
"This beef resulted in 15kg of CO2 emmissions per kilo"

Not trying to be a cleverclogs but folk should be careful what it is they wish for, because the type of consumer that does care tends to be fairly hard to impress by simple country-of-origin labelling, they would possibly like to know more about how much it cost our planet, in order to make the decision.

That group is the growing market, in global terms anyway, not trying at all to push my own agenda (it is beginning to push itself without any help) and that is one thing that traceability will not fix. Only farmers can fix that.

Movement traceability is essential for controlling diseases like foot and mouth.
Ironically though identification and movement rules are getting stricter but they have/are still essentially dismantled the country's vet lab network to a few main centres with few staff so we'd be buggered in another big outbreak anyway

Think yourself lucky you farm on an island that exports and is largely free from idiots

Henarar · Apr 12, 2018

Gulli said:
Think yourself lucky you farm on an island that exports and is largely free from idiots

there you go a new export opportunity

JP1 · Apr 12, 2018

Gulli said:
Movement traceability is essential for controlling diseases like foot and mouth.
Ironically though identification and movement rules are getting stricter but they have/are still essentially dismantled the country's vet lab network to a few main centres with few staff so we'd be buggered in another big outbreak anyway

Think yourself lucky you farm on an island that exports and is largely free from idiots

You're right about the local AHVLA / APHA whatever the latest agency name is. Madness when the balloon goes up

Gulli · Apr 12, 2018

JP1 said:
You're right about the local AHVLA / APHA whatever the latest agency name is. Madness when the balloon goes up

That's not how the government see it though! A few centres can monitor adequately (enough) and we haven't had a big infectious disease outbreak for a good few years as tb doesn't count. So why pay staff that in their eyes don't need to be there

JP1 · Apr 12, 2018

Gulli said:
That's not how the government see it though! A few centres can monitor adequately (enough) and we haven't had a big infectious disease outbreak for a good few years as tb doesn't count. So why pay staff that in their eyes don't need to be there

Easy from a desk isn't it. The Aussies and Kiwis take it all very seriously at the borders, not sure how it is internally and regionally but you'd think with the Pirbright F&M scare they'd have kept the local AHVLA officers if nothing else. TB and cynically accepting the gradual wildlife vector spread of a Grade 3 pathogen is a whole other topic

holwellcourtfarm · Apr 12, 2018

Gulli said:
That's not how the government see it though! A few centres can monitor adequately (enough) and we haven't had a big infectious disease outbreak for a good few years as tb doesn't count. So why pay staff that in their eyes don't need to be there

Because in 2001 they were fecked when F&M hit - Even @Mrs Holwell 's horse vet got called up to Cumbria to do a 6 week stint under orders

A well staffed, experienced and POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT state veterinary agency is critical to maintaining a healthy and viable livestock business. Their numbers have now dropped so low that we end up with XL Farm Vets contracted in at the lowest possible cost to pretend to manage TB testing

JP1 · Apr 12, 2018

holwellcourtfarm said:
Because in 2001 they were fecked when F&M hit - Even @Mrs Holwell 's horse vet got called up to Cumbria to do a 6 week stint under orders

A well staffed, experienced and POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT state veterinary agency is critical to maintaining a healthy and viable livestock business. Their numbers have now dropped so low that we end up with XL Farm Vets contracted in at the lowest possible cost to pretend to manage TB testing

Think it's even more cynical than that tbh. The SVS went on a tour a few years back under Paterson's orders explaining why further strictures would be put in place for TB pre-movement testing as they had to justify the £107m pump priming money from the EU. Yet they allow voluntary tagging and pre-movement testing of camelids even from known TB hotspots = madness

Y Fan Wen · Apr 12, 2018

Dead Rabbits said:
Why is your government so obsessed with tracking livestock? It is definitely not because the consumer demands it.

It all comes out of the BSE problem. BCMS was set up to keep track of all the cattle and link any BSE cases backwards and forwards. Then in the natural scheme of things it was thought it would be 'a good idea' to extend it onwards into other species. I think horses came after sheep? I anticipate pigs next, then hens, and finally bees!!

milkloss · Apr 12, 2018

Took three weeks for me to get the results of a brucellosis test because of an aborted calf. A week of that was administrative cluster fck.

Gulli · Apr 12, 2018

holwellcourtfarm said:
Because in 2001 they were fecked when F&M hit - Even @Mrs Holwell 's horse vet got called up to Cumbria to do a 6 week stint under orders

A well staffed, experienced and POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT state veterinary agency is critical to maintaining a healthy and viable livestock business. Their numbers have now dropped so low that we end up with XL Farm Vets contracted in at the lowest possible cost to pretend to manage TB testing

Yep but their view is that they only need to pay for disease surveillance and cross the 'we're f**ked' bridge when they get to it.
Money's more important than health or food

Henarar · Apr 12, 2018

Y Fan Wen said:
I think horses came after sheep? I anticipate pigs next, then hens, and finally bees!!

It will be entertaining putting ear tags in hens let alone bees

Philip Watkins · Apr 12, 2018

Henarar said:
It will be entertaining putting ear tags in hens let alone bees

You can get wing tags for poultry. Bees would be a challenge, 100 odd thousand per hive, lots of new ones emerging on a daily basis and I don't know how you would even start to account for mortality

milkloss · Apr 12, 2018

Philip Watkins said:
You can get wing tags for poultry. Bees would be a challenge, 100 odd thousand per hive, lots of new ones emerging on a daily basis and I don't know how you would even start to account for mortality

When they ban the sprays none will die so what’s the problem?

Philip Watkins · Apr 12, 2018

milkloss said:
When they ban the sprays none will die so what’s the problem?

Plenty of other causes of death not just sprays.

The Beef · Apr 13, 2018

Do any EID users have a preference for HDX or FDX tags?
We swapped to HDX as FDX reading in the crush was not very reliable. Seemingly the steel interferes with the FDX signals. We are getting on much better now

Am I right in thinking that sheep EID are FDX?

Cheesehead · Apr 13, 2018

Y Fan Wen said:
It all comes out of the BSE problem. BCMS was set up to keep track of all the cattle and link any BSE cases backwards and forwards. Then in the natural scheme of things it was thought it would be 'a good idea' to extend it onwards into other species. I think horses came after sheep? I anticipate pigs next, then hens, and finally bees!!

I will let them tag the bees I'll even lend them some pliers we've got enough old obsolete ones though I didn't think there were any left as I thought the birds and the bees were no more

New livestock EID measures announced by Michael Gove

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