EID Stick Reader and Flock Managment Software

[garfield89]

I'm currently looking for an EID stick reader and compatible flock software to help manage my flock.

Its a small starter flock of 30 breeding ewes which I'm hoping to grow to round 150-200, with ewe lambs as replacements and ram lambs sold direct as meat boxes.

Would a stick reader (rather then a hand held) do, for this small flock, along with a free version of compatible sheep software ?

Cheers

 

[Bob]

Shearwell Farmworks is OK I think the Phone APP is free but you may have to pay for management software. I find the Shearwell stick reader works fine

 

[garfield89]

Thanks Bob. Just out of interest, how far away will the stick reader, read a tag?

 

[Bob]

50cm or so

 

[garfield89]

cheers

 

[It was already broken.]

For what it is worth I would point out that proper handling facilities make using a stick reader a lot easier. waving a stick over 30 ewes in a pen or through the side of a trailer can get very frustrating.

 

[garfield89]

Thanks, i'll bare that in mind

 

[TGM]

There are 2 choices, stick reader or handheld. agrident provide both and both record the same information. all the agridents come with free pc software which enables you to record weights, births, tupping, medicines etc. there are 2 agrident handhelds, a yellow trimmed one and a red trimmed one and 2 agrident sticks, a yellow one and a red trimmed one. the yellow ones record management data, but have no lookup facility, the red ones record management data but also have lookup database, so you can lookup a sheep on the reader to see when it lambed, lamb tag numbers. batch, medicines, weights etc. The lowest cost agrident handheld is £385 - this includes the free software. - this is the yellow trimmed one with no internal database to look up animals. Reading distance is not 50 cm, Maximum for a stick or handheld is about 8 inches - 20 cm. to get up to 50 cm, you need a panel reader which only reads eid numbers and sends them into a weigh scale usually. Panel reader will set you back around £1100. not advised unless you want to look at recording in the region of 500 lambs an hour.

 

[garfield89]

Thanks, do the rearders have ability to download or upload cvt files to PC?

 

[CollCrofter]

Someone on here was selling a Shearwell handheld.. I'm sure it was yesterday I read it??

Handheld all day long for me, especially if you're growing your flock

 

[TGM]

All the agrident readers come with pc software 'AWRLink' which allows you to copy the tags off stick to pc as a csv. If you want to record management data - lambings, medicines, tupping, etc,, AWRLink also copies this data from the reader to the pc - presented in spreadsheet type reports. Even the lowest cost APR250 reader at £385 will do this level of recording and data can be copied to csv files.