I think the time has come to try and move forward with our sheep to try and improve our recording have been looking online and see the Agri dent apr600 with TGM software look best to suit our needs but with absolutely no experience of these things any advice is appreciated! What we want to be able to do is link ewes and lambs and record weights to see our best performing ewes/rams. We don’t have a fancy weigh bridge yet so being able to manually enter the weights is a must. A hand held reader would be better too as it be stuck in your pocket or the box on the bike. Thanks for any more suggestions
Eid readers
- Thread starter JohnAC
- Start date
Thats what we have and find it an excellent combination .
Just be aware that all hand held readers that are available need to be relatively very close to the animals tag to get a read, in practice this means having the animal in close quarters as you can imagine.
A stick reader can help that to a degree by giving a couple of feet extension of your arm but as you mention the non stick reader will fit so nicely in your pocket and be a proper mobile data recorder .
the answer of course is to be able to contain that animal either in its mothering up pen or by catching in the field outdoors , or in handling pens. / a race at other times .
If you have any more specific questions about that combo just ask .
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- Location
- Staffordshire Moorlands
Thanks for the feedback do you have the clip on wand to use it as a stick reader? Also do u lamb indoors or out? Is it much work recording at birth as we’re wanting to move to more outdoors
Outdoors and in .
All in this season because of the extremely wet conditions and the need to rest and not poach grass .
In that respect We will eartag at birth and then and link this time as an opportunity to 'tighten the flock up' as we have done at times in the past.
There are people who link at /near birth outdoors but not me I eartag them a few weeks later.
No we don't have the add on stick to the apr 600 i don't think we would use it.
Weighing lambs to check on health/growth is such a good tool we are finding.
Select Software full program is what we have, not the basic one for the reader that come s with TGM's supplied readers .
Just to note The apr 450 would save a bit of money over the apr 600 atm and be just as good.
just to add , just for the record, despite what a sales brochure might say , (read range 25cm?) an APR 600 reader will only read tags when at farthest approx. 8 cm away ,which in realty needs to almost touch the animal .
Thanks for your help bit the bullet yesterday and have ordered the apr 450 and the select software so time will tell how it goes
I lamb outdoors and record at birth using an agrident stick reader and flockwatch S/W on my phone.
Ewes are pre numbered so no hassle having to catch them at birth to number them up. Just have to number the lambs.
Lambs are rung/tagged as soon after birth as possible, certainly in the first 24 hours or you will struggle to catch the little blighters!
Sick reader is vital in that situation, a simple hand held reader wont reach the ewes ear tags often but a quick wave of the stick over the ewes head whilst she is distracted normally works before she knows what is going on.
Bit longer read range and obviously reach on your awr 300 helps to be a bit younger
as well I guess .I love our apr 600 and its handyness in the pens and the full select software adds so much to its usefullness as well, very complementary
helps to be a bit younger
Haha, yes, I sometimes give the task to my lambing assistant or a vet student, they typically are a 35 years younger than me!
- Location
- Staffordshire Moorlands
+1.
I took some ewes in the other day. Tried to scan them running through the race. No chance. Had to load them first then scan them in the trailer.
tbf the only thing that will read them reliably like that on themove will be a pr0per panel reader ,
wouldnt hurt to have a bit more range on the 600 but too much on hand readers and in a close pen with others situation the problem is mistakenly reading another tag than youre aiming for nearby
- Location
- Co Down UK
read range of apr agridents. Tubular tags: worst orientation her in the office (tag completely parallell to the reader ) range is 10 cm. best oritentation (tag is perpendicular to reader, ie pointing at it) range is 20 cm. The round tags are not as good. worst case could be as low as 8 cm best orientation 18 cm. tags are never actually angled 100% worst or 100% best as the sheep's ear flaps around, so 15 cm+ is a good estimation for the cylindrical type tags and 12 cm+ for the round ones. the round one i'm testing with is 2 cm diameter. you can get smaller and the smaller you go the smaller the range, so i suppose with small round eid tags, range could be down to 8 cm.
my test is on 4 different tags that we have in use, 3 loop ones with tubular chips of which qwiktag reads best and a round type tag which is poorest range and yes i agree to about 4 inches with a fair wind on a sunny day ...........but no way is it going to catch a read at 8 .
- Location
- East Sussex
Which has the better read in distance away from the sheep with Shearwell type tags, your reader with an extension or just a standard stick reader of Shearwell origin?
Lambing outside you tend to only get one chance to wave a stick at them!!
Could you leave a reader on continuous read and just attach it to a lamb and then when the ewe sniffed it it would read the tag?
- Location
- Western Washington
If that. Amazing how fast they can learn to run sometimes. A good lambing dog makes life easier. However, finding such a dog is a lot harder than it should be.
You could attach a reader to a lamb. But if you are going to that trouble why not just take the lamb away a few feet and scan the head of the ewe when she comes to claim her lamb.
our shearwell stick reader reads with bit more range but it isnt used in that sitution because it is not a data recorder , its an antiquated design and very expensive at that.
Holding the likes of it as a reader in one hand and a phone in the other is a pita.
before lambing paint /mark the ewes with big numbers (all logged in their details agaisnt their tag number) is the answer , still got catch the lamb though and single is one thing but a double is quite another .
catch lamb eartag , read the tag with reader /data collector, then manually add the ewes number thus completing the link .
the challenge for that is to make sure the number lasts and is readable for some time.
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ringi
Member
There was a system (I believe used in New Zealand) when all lambs got tagged and readers setup in gateways to discover the lambs that move to feed/water with each ewe. (It used large readers that could read any tag within a few feet.)
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Yes that is what we found as well, have 2 stick readers here for cattle and we notice the shortness of our yellow trutest one, the allflex unit's extra few inches of reach cuts a lot off the time of wanding a decent yardage of cattle.
With the short wand it's almost always a case of "fill the race read the race", whereas I can read a whole forcing pen full with the longer reader, just from standing on the walkway.
Then again if I am carrying them to the cattleyard on my bike, the short wand has a great scabbard which is just like slinging a rifle, where the other only has a moulded case. 8/10 times I will go for the one with more reach.