The value of EID reading on sheep farms

[HelenBell95]

What do people feel about the purchase of EID readers to improve efficiency on sheep farms? Do people feel the gains in efficiency through careful data collection of growth rates, livestock movements, medical tracking, grouping of ewes, tracing genetic lines, feedback from abattoirs are worth it?

 

[scottish-lleyn]

Yes.

 

[Downton_shep]

If your a closed flock definitely. If your not then it isint quite so straight forward.

 

[wee man]

They are only worth it if you are going to use the data to do something. Then the something that you do has to be more beneficial than the cost of the reader and time to collect and analyse the data.
A good example of a waste of time would be culling the ewes that reared the runty tail end lambs then going and buying replacement gimmers from the great stockman that can turn any runt in to a fine looking sheep. If on the other hand you breed your own replacements from tups that are selected to be productive under commercial conditions then the time and effort of finding and culling the ewes that produced the runts would be worth it.

 

[JD-Kid]

yes well worth it we have found out alot of stuff with our sheep on eid
the frist reader we had probs getting the info out of it now with new unit and drafter finding out all kinds of stuff and adding more info to the ewes files if repeat twinners etc so can target them with better rams
seen some ewes with high weights that lost lambs that were high weights last year so pointing to they don't rase a lamb ,hard to know in set stocking or hill blocks
watching lambs growth picking up on some with health worm probs etc
so even tho it's a cost it's also a great tool simple to use
we have not used it yet to get feed back from killing plant but the info we could get back maybe worthless as to many ewes and rams used so can't realy link back to sires if single sire mated and followed each line of lambs etc maybe but not eneff paddocks etc
same with runt lambs can't realy track them that well due to system etc we have
smaller farms even with pen and paper have big gains just with the info they know EID can make getting the info and useing it eazer for bigger farms some with the use of handhelds ,app's etc
big thing is it's the speed of entering the info and then useing the info in spreadsheets or mangerment programs to sort the data into useable info to make gains in areas people are wanting to go ahead with

 

[Al R]

I've been wanting to go down this route with a more complex system than just a simple agrident wand tag reader but when you tag 200lambs and 2 days later the slaughterhouse says 8 didn't read you wonder if it's worth it. Closed flock for 15years on 1 farm so would see a gain over 900ewes but when 138 culls went last August we had to retag 32 because the chip had fallen out I wouldn't want to spend on drafters etc!
Are some makes of tags better than others?

 

[neilo]

I've been wanting to go down this route with a more complex system than just a simple agrident wand tag reader but when you tag 200lambs and 2 days later the slaughterhouse says 8 didn't read you wonder if it's worth it. Closed flock for 15years on 1 farm so would see a gain over 900ewes but when 138 culls went last August we had to retag 32 because the chip had fallen out I wouldn't want to spend on drafters etc!
Are some makes of tags better than others?

What tags are you using? I've been in Shearwell Set tags since EID started and can only remember two that have failed to read. Still get a few broken/lost, but very few have failed to read.
Seem to lose more Shearwell tags than we used to, but they were fantastic for retention before.

 

[neilo]

What do people feel about the purchase of EID readers to improve efficiency on sheep farms? Do people feel the gains in efficiency through careful data collection of growth rates, livestock movements, medical tracking, grouping of ewes, tracing genetic lines, feedback from abattoirs are worth it?

I don't think EID necessarily makes anything better, it just makes it easier. You could do all the above with pen & paper if you were so inclined, it's just easier & faster with EID, so more likely to get done perhaps.

 

[texelburger]

What tags are you using? I've been in Shearwell Set tags since EID started and can only remember two that have failed to read. Still get a few broken/lost, but very few have failed to read.
Seem to lose more Shearwell tags than we used to, but they were fantastic for retention before.

We ,too, seem to be losing a lot more Shearwell tags recently than we were previously, especially the coloured non eid tag.Have noticed that some batches are brittle and even break on the bendy bit when you put them into the applicator. Pity really,as they were good before but we are now considering moving to a different band.

 

[hill farmer]

We ,too, seem to be losing a lot more Shearwell tags recently than we were previously, especially the coloured non eid tag.Have noticed that some batches are brittle and even break on the bendy bit when you put them into the applicator. Pity really,as they were good before but we are now considering moving to a different band.

We've only used them one year , with us it seemed to be the eid tag that fell out, lost over 10 % in first year, though not many seem to have fell out since. All tags seemed to read though
Very good firm to deal with, after I posted on here about probs with their tags, they pm'd me and sent local rep to have a look, he couldn't tell me why they had come out though!

 

[JD-Kid]

We ,too, seem to be losing a lot more Shearwell tags recently than we were previously, especially the coloured non eid tag.Have noticed that some batches are brittle and even break on the bendy bit when you put them into the applicator. Pity really,as they were good before but we are now considering moving to a different band.

we tryed them this year and ones snapped just were yer saying on the bend
hope they don't fall out like hill farmers talking about or it will be back to plan B

 

[texelburger]

We've only used them one year , with us it seemed to be the eid tag that fell out, lost over 10 % in first year, though not many seem to have fell out since. All tags seemed to read though
Very good firm to deal with, after I posted on here about probs with their tags, they pm'd me and sent local rep to have a look, he couldn't tell me why they had come out though!

They are a good firm to deal with,i agree,but we have had losses like you where there is no tear just a hole left in the ear and problems with some being brittle.We had a batch 2/3 years ago with brittle ones,last year they varied within a pack,some brittle,some not.We have used shearwell since the conception of tagging and ,imo,the quality of tags were better a few years ago.

 

[JD-Kid]

we found the tags read very well had no miss read but was worryed when we seen on split a few weeks after putting in now reading some things on here a bit more worryed ..
nice small tags for lambs tho and eazy to use

 

[neilo]

I hope @Hch is taking note.

 

[Hch]

I hope @Hch is taking note.

Thanks for the shout out. If anyone would like the PM your telephone number we will give you a call and hopefully get things sorted Sorry to he's some people are having problems [emoji207][emoji243]

 

[Bury the Trash]

I guess (consistant) plastic type/quality/mix is key to the tag strength and long life and that responsibility is at the 'factory' and might not be in the 'direct' hands of the seller/designer. ??


Eid is much more fun than pencil and paper for the tech . interested, not paperwork type Ir
It gives huge benefit at lambing, all that info about the ewes lambing ease /mothering ability/linking lambs.Ironically though ime it is much easier / amount of info wise indoors with at point of lambing and then in individual pens giving you more time or 'second chance' to tag/record..etc... imho.

 

[Al R]

What tags are you using? I've been in Shearwell Set tags since EID started and can only remember two that have failed to read. Still get a few broken/lost, but very few have failed to read.
Seem to lose more Shearwell tags than we used to, but they were fantastic for retention before.

I looked today, shearwell! Speaking to dad he's saying there good but a few that go to slaughter arnt read for some reason? The batch of 138 where we had to re tag a pile were some 2004-2006 ewes so weren't EID when tagged but because we were selling them had to EID them.

Anyone using a Agrident ABE200 wand?

Neil, how do you get away with EID at birth/few hours old on outdoor lambing? We're thinking of utilising EID better now but 700 twins outdoor might take a while to tag and input the data. We're thinking it could be too time consuming to tag at birth and input the data. In the time wasted we could maybe lose a few lambs etc or not get around all of the flocks every 2 hours like we like to do!

 

[JD-Kid]

only thing we found with early tagging is the growth of the ear
how do others get on if the tags at the front of the ear with studs when we used to use brass tags did not seem to be a prob but rams we brought in this year tags on front of ear had partly growen in to leading edge of ear
i maybe wrong but seem to think the back side of ear has less growth but harder to see tag if put there if haveing to draft on coloured tags

 

[redcoo235]

Have only been using EID since the spring but has made a big difference to how we are managing sheep and decisions we make with them. Been using it mainly for checking growth rates of lambs and for selecting ewe lambs from the best ewes.

If you can go and see someone who is using it in practise is probably best way to see if it would suit your system, this is how I felt it would be good for us. As everyone says though if you are not going to use the data to make decisions then maybe not for you.

A lot of farmers seem to be really anti EID and say its a waste of time without giving it a go or seeing others using it but there you go, not for everyone.

 

[JD-Kid]

Have only been using EID since the spring but has made a big difference to how we are managing sheep and decisions we make with them. Been using it mainly for checking growth rates of lambs and for selecting ewe lambs from the best ewes.

If you can go and see someone who is using it in practise is probably best way to see if it would suit your system, this is how I felt it would be good for us. As everyone says though if you are not going to use the data to make decisions then maybe not for you.

A lot of farmers seem to be really anti EID and say its a waste of time without giving it a go or seeing others using it but there you go, not for everyone.

can recall years ago when the twin taging and eid come in there were people up in arms about it a few still will be with added costs etc and for a small flock that would be true by the time all the add ons are added in to the system
a few things i have picked up talking to some people is if useing a app just use the vid numbers cross linked to EID for a start at least all the animals are in the system and once some one can aford to up grade to a stick reader ,some of them now getting smarter with more info stored on them so clever bit of gear
i said years ago people should forget about the eid as just a tool for paper trails for the govt and look at it's use at grass roots in improveing flocks following lamb/hogget growths etc etc in a small system pen and paper dose work but once getting up to a few hundred the speed of use is better to get info
we are useing it more and more picking up probs with in our flock
looking at tagging at tailing so can get weaning weights and follow those lambs on watching growth post weaning any health probs etc
sure we are larger scale but for years we could not trace ewes or realy know what lambs were doing a lamb weaning say 37 kg may be slow growing rest of it's life but is hiden in the system now we can find them early on
same with ewes now we have 2 years worth of scanning date and can see ewes that have only had singles each time and others always haveing twins so better use of rams to breed replacments by targeting better ewes
finding animals needing more health products etc all start to show up as we can ID them in the flock .
over time the poorer ones are sold or put in a group that no replacments are kept from
same if feed drys up can look at say the single repeate ewes we can look at them harder and maybe sell more out of them to look after replacment type breeding ewes
we spent just on 10 000 swap diffrence between our old set up and the new one last year in the dry i belive they payed for them selfs in one season just from IDing poorer types also showed up some long term health probs with worms and we are addressing that as well with rams buying in and also testing them along with some ewe lambs to see if links to weight gains and worm levels
we can also follow groups of sires and there off spring to see what diffrences in breeds as far as lambing % later in life weaning weights kill out % etc all things that are income drivers
sure there is a cost to up grade but there are many ways of makeing that money back be it better returns or lower costs be it animal health wise use of feeds even time saved sure we don't pay our selfs much but time to see friends and family at times is priceless