Raise The Baa 2020

Raise the Baa

RAISE THE BAA

1

Trusted by kiwi farmers for

generations.

2

RAISE THE BAA

www.allflex.global/nz

RAISE THE BAA

3

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

4

RAISE THE BAA

7

GENERAL MANAGER: Jared Briggs

8-9

RETURN TO EID TAGGING: Investing now for better future performance

10-11

LIVEWEIGHT GAIN: Lamb growth focus made easier

12-13

ID COMMERCIAL LEAD: Steve Kelly

14-15

EID TAGGING: Data delivers better selection outcomes

16-18

DECISION MAKING: Traceability closes the loop for meat customers

19

FARM TO FORK: Engine room of a trusted supply chain

20-21

AUTOMATING SCANNING DATA: Lamb weaning formula ticks all the boxes

24-25

ID PRODUCT MANAGER: Mark McManaway

26-27

MANAGEMENT BENEFITS: Extra knowledge gained without the added workload

28-29

ON-FARM TRIALS: Breed comparison trial underway at Castlepoint

30-32

TISSUE SAMPLING: Clever technologies give Hinenui the edge

CONTENTS

34-35

SOFTWARE: Smart FarmIQ app enhances data value for farmers

36-37

WEIGHING UP THE COST: Leap of faith into EID ear tags pays off

38-39

BETTER SELECTION: Detailed history building for top Tararua flock

40-41

OMEGA LAMB PROJECT: EID tags critical for Headwaters flock improvement

44-46

FOCUS ON OUTCOMES: Smart tag investment easy decision

47-48

MERINO WOOL: Technology supports Lindis Peaks’ fine wool aims

50-51

GENETIC TRIALS: No more guesswork on breed transition

52-53

FUTURE PROOFING: Tag cost no barrier for future-proofing farm

Published by NZ Farm Life Media, proud publisher of Country-Wide and NZ Dairy Exporter magazines, for Allflex Livestock Intelligence in October 2020. www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

RAISE THE BAA

5

Challenge expectations.

Not all tags are created equal. Each Allflex tag is a superb piece of craftsmanship and capturing that crucial data throughout the flock has never been easier. Our EID tags provide strong robust retention throughout the life of the animal and have been proven to perform extremely well with processors – making them a preferred option for premium programmes. Tested by some of New Zealand’s largest sheep flocks, Allflex tags exceed expectations and deliver results.

Lightweight button tag (EID) Known as a premium or high performance option, this two piece tag can be paired with a tissue sampling unit (TSU) and is often the preferred choice for stud breeders.

Depending on the yarding environment and equipment used, this tag can improve the readability in some set ups.

RapID tag (EID) Suitable for all flocks, this one piece tag can be applied with an automatic applicator, making it easier on tagging rounds. Designed in New Zealand and used in flocks globally, this tag provides great retention rates and is a great transition from flexi or flock visual tags.

Flexitag One piece visual tag.

Perfect for simple flock or year marking.

An easy transition through to RapID EID tags.

6

RAISE THE BAA

GENERAL MANAGER JARED BRIGGS

Ongoing commitment to farmers

W

HEN YOU’RE IN the business of improving farm performance, it’s rewarding to see your innovations drive real results for farmers. The uptake of electronic identification (EID) in both studs and commercial flocks is on the rise and it reinforces the value of individual animal performance. Not only recording flock data but really drilling down to individual animal information to improve decisions at crucial times of the year.

Allflex is a household name for most farmers, we contribute to a range of industry initiatives and support rural communities at a grassroots level. With monitoring and identification at the core, the driving force for me is people. We’re focused on building strong relationships and it’s reflected in the way the team operates throughout the country. There’s an expectation to get out on farm, understand individual operations and both our customer service and production teams place a real emphasis on problem solving with clients using their years of expertise.

We’re regularly investing in people, tripling the field team in the last 12 months to support growth, as well as retaining a wealth of knowledge through these long standing experts that’s then shared across the wider team.

Our electronic sheep tags have advanced in recent years, particularly with the involvement in the FarmIQ pilot programme. In 2010 we partnered with FarmIQ to develop a one piece sheep tag with HDX (high performance) technology in the stem to allow large mobs to be tagged quickly and easily. They needed a large volume of individual animal data to validate the software and we were looking to provide farmers with a cost-effective option that was proven in the field. This trial was the birth of the RapID tag and the validation of Allflex sheep tag performance both in the field and at the processor end. Other premium initiatives such as Headwaters, the breeding programme of The Omega Lamb Project have used both Allflex EID

tags and tissue sampling products to conduct years of genetic and agronomic research to develop what is now known as Te Mana Lamb, a premium product that delivers high returns for its farmers. It’s been these initiatives that have spread the word around the benefits of individual data in commercial sheep flocks, and we decided it was time to showcase some of the practical ways this data is now being used to improve performance throughout the season.

Allflex Livestock Intelligence is an integral part of MSD Animal Health intelligence and this relationship has really strengthened our research and development capability within the sector. Over 500 million animals per year are identified or monitored with an Allflex product, and this number is growing daily. With a global network and regular local field trials, we are able to use our joint expertise to further develop innovations for New Zealand sheep farmers. Many of these you’ll start to see soon including a new range of readers, which will make data collection even easier for farmers.

We’re also starting to see some excellent DNA options available for commercial sheep farmers through our key partners as well as huge potential in food safety and value-add markets through the Irish company IdentiGEN, a new acquisition under the MSD Animal Health portfolio.

With a growing team located throughout the country, we’re committed to working with farmers to increase the performance of their flock. So the question is simple, if you had individual scanning, treatment, trait and weight gain information on hand when drafting ewes – what would you do differently?

Jared Briggs General Manager of Allflex New Zealand

RAISE THE BAA

7

A RETURN TO EID TAGGING

BY JO GRIGG

Investing now for

BETTER FUTURE PERFORMANCE

F

RASER AVERY IS a steadfast advocate for onfarm monitoring.

He is prepared to spend a bit of money on it, even when the benefits are not immediately obvious at the start. At Bonavaree, climate monitoring stations have been installed with a view to finding out more around climate, soils and production.

Although Bonavaree has exceptional ewe flock performance, Fraser sees room to do better. Having a large ewe flock of 3500 mixed age ewes and 1020 two-tooths, means that any changes, no matter how small, can make a big difference to the bottom line.

In 2019, Bonavaree ewes weaned 75% of their lambs prime with an average weaning weight of 40.5 kg. The average dressing out weight was a hefty 19.3kg for the season.

8

RAISE THE BAA

While some farmers may sit back and relax at this point, Fraser has refocused on monitoring individual and small mob performance. And to do this, he is using Allflex electronic tags and a recording system.

In particular, Fraser sees opportunities to maximise lamb survival by addressing issues with abortion in hoggets in late pregnancy. Together, with veterinary consultant Peter Anderson, Fraser is using electronic tags to record and track ewe weight, grazing management and fertility history.

“We are looking at the post-mating weight loss of ewes and whether this, in turn, affects their foetus’s future performance as a mother.”

It has been a bad year for hogget abortions and the issue is front and centre.

LEFT: Fraser Avery is searching for higher performance in his ewe flock, and using Allflex RapID tags to collect more data.

ABOVE: Every year, ewe hoggets are tagged with RapID tags so data collection starts early.

FARM DETAILS OWNERS: Fraser and Shelley Avery AREA: 2500ha

SHEEP WINTERED: 3500 ewes, 1020 2ths, 1240 hoggets CATTLE WINTERED: 225 cows, 86 heifers, 66 heifer calves, 50 carry-over cows, 85 grazing FINISHING CATTLE: 90 R2 steers, 216 R2 bulls, 206 bull calves FLAT TO UNDULATING: 19% of farm ROLLING: 18%

MODERATE STEEP: 58% STEEP: 5%

RAM DATES: 1 to 18 March (MA, 2ths), 1 April hoggets (all) LAMB WEANING: Average 40.5kg (2019) with 75% prime at weaning, Carcase weight 19.3kg ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tags

Bonavaree was a FarmIQ pilot farm and early adopter of tag technology. Through the programme the Averys had support to roll out EID tagging to young stock and train themselves and staff up on using the system and understand the data coming though.

During this time, Averys were investigating different sheep breeds.

They found linking carcase data to genetics very revealing.

After a couple of seasons of tagging just the ewe hoggets and some ram lambs, the Averys decided to tag the remaining untagged mixed age ewes. Part of the benefit of being involved was also free EID tags.

When the free tag deal ceased, Fraser said he was quite undecided whether the costs justified the benefits.

For two years the ewe lambs were not tagged with EID tags. At this point the health issue in hoggets becoming increasingly frustrating and Fraser realised he could use EID to get more information on what was happening.

“Peter Anderson had a plan to address the issue but we really needed individual EID.” “Someone told me years ago that if there is less than twenty percent difference, it is hard to see by eye.”

“This is why we measure and monitor. It’s to get the incremental change.”

The current policy is to tag all ewe lambs. The farm infrastructure includes a tailing chute with lamb weigh scale. This is

when tags are put in and the lambs first data (tailing weight) is recorded against the tag number. The main sheep yard has a Racewell six-way auto drafter and conveyor. The new block Glenfield, has a Racewell three-way auto drafter. There are panel readers at both places but Fraser also has a wand that is handy to identify numbers in the race. The wand collects the data and Fraser uses Excel and FarmIQ to analyse it.

“I really like technology and use Farmax and FarmIQ.” Once the data is sorted, he can put it back into the reader to instruct the automatic drafter to draft up a certain way. Carcase weights are added via information from the processing company, although pregnancy scanning status is not linked to each individual tag.

“I couldn’t see the benefit of this as, year after year, we see a twin have a twin.”

Fraser would like to use it to identify triplet ewes that only wean one lamb.

Previously he has used it to track lamb weights on different forages.

“We did a whole lot of work on this.”

The best return on investment is still to come, says Fraser.

“I’m learning how to get more out of it all the time, from talking to others who use it.”

In the meantime, this spring the ewes that have lost a lamb in utero will be scanned to see if their management was any different to those that didn’t.

RAISE THE BAA

9

LIVEWEIGHT GAIN SELECTION

BY KATE TAYLOR

LAMB GROWTH focus made easier

M

AKING SURE LAMBS are growing at a good enough rate for his steep, East Coast hill country is one of the main benefits of Dave Read’s use of Allflex EID tags.

Read and wife Judy Bogaard have been farming 1200ha Waiau Station (1050ha effective) near Frasertown since 1996. Son Luke has joined the business this year after working for about 10 years on farms in the Gisborne district.

Waiau Station is run in conjunction with 560ha Allington Farm at Kotemaori as a breeding and finishing operation.

Fourteen hundred ewe lambs are tagged at weaning and replacements are selected based on liveweight gain as well as liveweight.

“That means by the time those hoggets get through to two tooth stage, you don’t get that tail that drops off,” Read says.

10

RAISE THE BAA

“When we were selecting just on liveweight, we were picking up some lambs that had just had a marvellous time on mum but then stood still. Maybe their mother was fantastic but they were average or worse than average.

“Before EID, all lambs were weighed at weaning and colour coded (e.g. blue bum at 23kg, blue mid back at 24kg, blue shoulders at 25kg).

We’d weigh them again before we vaccinated them, so you’d have to do all the maths in your head, what a nightmare; now, that process is much easier.”

We tag and weigh them at weaning and then they come up when we’re selecting them to get their toxoplasmosis jabs. We have a formula based on liveweight and growth rate so a tiny lamb even if it’s growing flat tack is not going to make it but the bigger lambs also need to have a reasonable growth rate.”

FARM DETAILS

OWNERS Dave Read and Judy Bogaard AREA:1200ha (12ha flat, rest steep hill country); Allington: 560ha (40ha rolling, rest steep) STOCK: Waiau: 10,117su (2130 MA ewes, 1000 Two-tooths, 1400 hoggets); Allington: 4240su SYSTEMS: Waiau: Breeding; Allington: Terminal sire ewes and cows, finish all progeny (no crops) PERFORMANCE: 10-15% lambs prime at weaning RAINALL: 1300mm, but regular ‘slope-induced’ dry on 400ha of north-facing steep hills ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tags.

ABOVE: East Coast farmer Dave Read on the drafting gate at Waiau Station’s main yards. He’s using EID tags to make better selection decisions on his ewe hoggets. LEFT: Waiau Station owner Dave Read moves an early lambing ewe and its lambs to a fresh paddock.

Read says the vaccination is some time before mating, so the machine is estimating what the liveweight will be at mating date using that day’s weight and the history of growth.

“Also, we’re dropping off the ones with appalling growth rates, even if they are going to be up to weight in the end.”

Waiau Station is steep, hard hill country; Read says their live weight gains are way down on better country but still the “best for what we’ve got”. Last year, the farm’s predicted liveweight on April 23 needed to be 38kg or over for lambs to be selected.

“Anything that was doing less than 40 grams a day was definitely out, no matter how big it was. From 40 to 80 grams a day, they may stay but they would have to have a predicted liveweight of maybe 39 or 40kg to be in. Basically, if they’re doing more than 90 grams a day they’re going to be in. Remember this is on steep hill country, no cropping. Some farmers would be appalled at those growth rates but that’s our country.”

Read wants to end up with 1100 hoggets so he tags and mates about 1400.

The 3600 ewes are a composite of his own design. Called Readstock, they have a bare belly, bare breech and are bare tailed.

“They don’t need docking; they very rarely need dagging and if they do need dagging more than once they’re down the road. We’re also chasing resilience to parasites, which can be better described as production under challenge, and chasing facial eczema tolerance.

We’re testing at 0.056 so we’re getting there.

“I have been registered with SIL, Sheep Improvement Ltd, for more than 10 years now and I was breeding my own ram lambs for 10 years before that but it has become a lot more rigorous under SIL. EID is an essential part of that.”

For stud lambs he uses a band of Allflex EID tags with duplicate non-EID tags; it’s rolled up in a magazine and the first shot is the EID in the left ear while the second shot in the right ear has the same visual number as a backup.

“That speeds things up so you’re not loading up individual tags.”

Another huge part of EID technology on Waiau Station is directed at the ewes. The weigh crate has been connected to the scanner, which allows the number of lambs to be recorded against each ewe as they are scanned.

“We’ve just started this this year, we dot them with a raddle as well as a backup, but it’s building the profile of that sheep. For a long time, any sheep that has a single twice in its life, has been put to a terminal sire on the other farm. EID has made that a lot easier; we used to put notches in their tag which was a hoha [nuisance].

“There are people who don’t keep the progeny from ewes that produce a single but that’s crazy; at 180% scanning without counting triplets, you would expect that ewe to have one single in its lifetime.”

Read’s goal is to get to 160% weaned.

“We’ve had some enormous storms that have blown that out of the water but it is achievable, even on really steep hill country.”

Read says son Luke used Farm IQ but for the stud animals, the information exports to Excel then SIL. “That replaces the old stud book. I’d love to go to DNA for all the parentage but at the moment, it’s just too expensive. It should be tumbling in price, but it’s not. I DNA test my stud cattle at about $25 a pop. Bring down to $5 and I’d probably do all my sheep too.”

Due to NAIT, Read’s cattle also have Allflex tags in their ears.

“We use the same sort of data as we do for the sheep, we’re not just doing it for NAIT. We’re extracting extra value by getting a whole lot of management data out of it.”

Waiau Station has a 20ha QEII National Trust covenant as well as 38ha fenced bush, 15ha wood lots, 20ha regenerating manuka and 120ha unfenced bush. Dave and Judy were finalists in the 2019 East Coast Ballance Farm Environment Awards and Dave is an ambassador for the Poplar and Willow Research Trust. The farm has about 4000 poplars and willows for erosion control, shade and shelter, and fodder when needed.

RAISE THE BAA

11

COMMERCIAL MANAGER STEVE KELLY

EID tagging on the rise Allflex’s ID Commercial Lead Steve Kelly works with the company’s partners.

12

RAISE THE BAA

M

Y ROLE AS COMMERCIAL LEAD of

Identification at Allflex is focused on relationships and working with our partners to help improve livestock intelligence on farm.

I’ve been with Allflex for more than five years, based in Gore, and look after the key accounts nationwide.

The adoption rate of sheep tags has seen a steady growth. Farmers using sheep tags generally tag their replacements with a flexi or flock tag to indicate a year and ownership – and that’s about all it will give them.

We are seeing a growth in the number of farmers who want to monitor an individual animal’s performance, so there are a lot of more in-depth conversations happening around this sort of technology.

As a result, we are seeing a growing interest in EID tags. The transition is generally from that flexi/flock tag through to an electronic RapID tag as it’s a similar application and provides everything a farmer needs to unlock that individual data.

Allflex has been at the forefront of this technology for over 10 years now.

We’ve been a partner of the Headwaters’ Te Mana lamb project since its inception and they use both our RapID EID tag and the lightweight EID button tag paired to a tissue sampling unit (TSU), which is an easy and accurate way for them to drive genetic gain.

A few years ago, we were also involved with the FarmIQ pilot programme, which gave us a lot of exposure in this space.

Not only did it help with the uptake of EID tags, it also put our specific tags to the test, and they performed well in both the field and in a meat works environment.

In fact, the performance of Allflex EID tags in high metal environments, such as processors, has led to them being the preferred option for farmers seeking premium supply programmes.

In terms of what we are seeing in the commercial space for EID technology, it’s very clear - data drives flock performance, as it does in so many other aspects of farming.

Great stockmanship will always be the essence of farming, however EID enables farmers to access that individual data and it very quickly gives you a range of information on hand.

From scanning results to weight gains and animal health treatments. In the first year of applying EID tags, you’ll get scanning results on those ewes, you can drill down to each individual sheep, make informed culling decisions and over time improve your A and B flock performance by weeding out those underperformers.

GETTING STARTED

WHEN A FARMER is considering EID

tags for their flock, one of the first things we do is head straight out to the farm and catch up with them. We take a look at their existing gear such as panel readers, drafters and load bars and have a discussion about what they are wanting to achieve with EID. The Allflex process is to start with

COMMERCIAL MANAGER STEVE KELLY

LEFT:Ewes carrying Allflex RapID tags, an ideal option for commercial sheep flocks.

the customer and work backwards from there. We are well placed to offer a range of advice in this space regardless of what system you use to collect the data.

We work with all leading providers and have a wealth of experience in ensuring the right gear is used with the right tag – to avoid unnecessary frustration when the pressure is on. A conversation costs nothing and it might not be the right time for everyone, but data collection using EID tags is a fantastic tool that if used well can pay huge dividends to your business.

So in reality the tag is the cheap part.

There’s around a $1.60 difference between a flexi tag and RapID EID tag. But if you work that out over a six to seven year life, it is about 25c/year which is easy to justify.

If you’re starting from scratch without any gear the worst-case scenario would be around $20,000 investment to set the farm up with a five-way drafter, indicator, wand or panel to read the tags and load bars for weighing.

The key is to get good gear or be willing to invest in minor upgrades to existing gear, rather than taking the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude and wrapping a piece of insulation tape around a cable to give it a birthday. Time and time again we see old gear letting people down, when it could have been a $250 investment on a new cable, for example, and the data collection would have been seamless.

GLOBAL INSIGHT

THERE’S CONSTANT INNOVATION in

this space and with Allflex being the only current provider of tissue sampling units in

New Zealand, DNA and individual data is a real focus for us.

I am the Asia Pacific representative for the global ovine group for Allflex Livestock Intelligence.

Last year I was given the opportunity to go to Norway to discuss what is happening in the ovine sector globally.

With schemes already in place in the likes of the UK, which is a double tag scheme of visual and EID tags and schemes across Australia including a compulsory EID scheme in the state of Victoria, we expect to see advancements in this space coming to New Zealand over time.

The big one to consider in the coming seasons is in that premium programme space and some of the profiles in this publication have elaborated on this.

The growth in commercial flocks adopting EID technology is often a way of future proofing whilst reaping immediate benefits within the flock.

If a processor establishes a new market for New Zealand lamb that requires paddock to plate traceability, the farms that are investing in EID now are the ones ready to take that opportunity and will have high performing flocks because of the information they have available to them.

We are seeing this mindset growing across the sector. Having a global connection is great for staying up to date with what tagging and monitoring animals will look like in the future and Allflex are focused on remaining leaders in this space.

RAISE THE BAA

13

EID TAGGING

BY TONY LEGGETT

DATA DELIVERS

better selection outcomes

A

Wairarapa farmer Richard Tosswill has been tagging ewe hogget replacements and is now ready to find his most productive ewes for lamb growth rate.

14

RAISE THE BAA

FTER THREE YEARS of electronic identification (EID) tagging ewe hogget replacements, Wairarapa farmer Richard Tosswill is now ready to extract much greater insights from his ewe flock.

He’s capturing pregnancy data at ewe scanning, body condition scores through the year and liveweights to build a more detailed profile of his flock and its progeny.

A primary intention in tagging his annual crop of ewe hogget replacements is to improve ewe selection based on their efficiency of lamb production. But he’s also mindful of the signals coming from meat companies on farmers providing full traceability and production history back to farm of origin.

Richard admits he’s struggled initially with how to process and make more use of his captured data sets, but that’s high on his agenda now he has built up the history over the past three years.

The Tosswills farm 646ha (622ha effective) east of Masterton where they winter 2800 ewes and 900 ewe hoggets (all mated), plus a beef cow herd of 110 cows and replacements.

Depending on weather conditions and pasture growth, they usually corporate some winter finishing of trade lambs and run up to 150 rising one or two-year cattle.

Less than 10% of their farm is cultivatable and the balance is medium to steep hill country, typically summer dry with limited finishing capability.

Lamb weaning starts in midNovember for the mixed age flock and continues, depending on the season, through to early January for the ewe hogget lambs.

Richard puts a big emphasis on lamb growth rate to de-risk his business against the impact of the regular dry summers.

He typically slaughters 40-50% of lambs at weaning, averaging around 16.5kg carcaseweight.

Lamb weaning weights in 2019 ranged from 30-32kg in the mixed age mobs, and averaged about 30kg for the two-tooths and around 32kg for the ewe hogget lambs. All ewe hoggets are mated.

EID TAGGING OF his replacement ewe hoggets means he can now start to select more accurately and improve the overall fertility of his mixed age flock. It also means he can assess the performance of progeny bred from rams from new sources.

“We don’t have a really fecund ewe flock. It’s Texel-Coopworth cross,” Richard says.

“So, tagging them means we can now easily identify our lower producers - singles and lates – and that history is there for us to run them through our three-way auto drafting unit to split them off for culling later if we choose to.”

Richard is also keen to sort out what he terms “repeat offenders” – ewes that are overfat most of the year and typically rear a single lamb. With individual tagging, these ewes don’t just “disappear” into the flock at set stocking time.

He is also experimenting with mating some of his ewe flock to straight Romney sires. EID tagging means the performance of their resulting progeny can be tracked easily for comparison against other sire groups.

He’s installed a Te Pari auto-drafting system at his main yards and has a small scales unit at the satellite yards near the back of the property. Richard is also seeing value in managing feed allocation based on individual lamb liveweight gain.

“I’m a big-time ‘weigher’ of stock. I’ve always weighed stock because I like to see information that gives you a clearer picture on what are they doing per day.”

A good example of its value is his change of tack with ewe hoggets in late pregnancy when he has experienced lambing problems from over-feeding. But with Allflex EID tags and regular

ABOVE: Wairarapa farmers Richard and Becks Tosswill, on their property. weighing, he can be more precise in his allocation of feed in that critical final trimester.

Ewe lambs are typically fed on crops and EID tags mean he can sift out under-performers on actual weight gain data, rather than just a liveweight, for moving back to another crop or on to pasture.

The Tosswills are also members of a producer group which supplies lambs to a group of specialist finishers, who also have the capability to track the weight gain and yield performance at slaughter of mobs of lambs.

“I’d tag all the male progeny if it meant that offering full traceability allowed access to premium meat markets. But at this point, we’re just tagging a few so our finishers in the producer group can track performance of each line of lambs.”

He’s hoping that the finishers will reward him for superior yield, weight gain performance and carcase conformation of his lambs.

On reflection, he says the past three years of EID tagging has not created higher returns or a more productive flock, but he can now see scope for this from here on.

“WE WERE ALREADY tagging our replacement ewe hoggets anyway, so there’s no more effort or time to put in an EID tag.

The key for us is to find easy ways to manage the data to build the history on each animal in our flock so it can be used for selection decisions in the future,” Richard says.

“It suits my personality to be in control of the numbers. So it’s great to be able to compare performance of single and twin-born lambs or progeny from different ram sources without a lot of extra work and manual recording,” he says.

RAISE THE BAA

15

DECISION MAKING

BY KATE TAYLOR

TRACEABILITY closes the loop for meat customers

W

AIRARAPA FARMERS Matt and Lynley Wyeth say electronic identification fits well with where agriculture sits in the modern world.

“The customer wants to know how that animal was raised and treated and where it lived,” Matt says.

“Did it lead a nice happy life? Was it sustainable and environmentally friendly? Perhaps right down to whether it was a twin, what its growth rate was, who drenched it and what the drench number was, etc. etc. and they are entitled to make the final decision.

“They open the wallet; they can buy a nice prime lamb or Angus sirloin or synthetic or plant stuff or chicken. They’re the one making the purchase and we should be able to give them all the information they want.”

Spring Valley Enterprises is three farms totalling 2100ha (1350ha effective) with three managers and other shepherds – the home farm at Spring Valley at Kaituna, just outside of Masterton has the A flock and ewe lambs and supplies replacements to the other farms – Maranui next door and Ratanui, which is 20km down the road at Mt Bruce. All stock is EID tagged.

Lynley says they align their business with Allflex because they’re modern and forward thinking.

“They are trying to connect with their customers, which in turn are our customers, to provide them with that information. They’re thinking ahead. They’re advanced in everything they do. Before we need it, they’ve already thought of it.”

“They’re cutting edge,” Matt adds.

“They’re not selling you a tag, they’re selling you a concept. It’s tags at the moment, but whether

16

RAISE THE BAA

it’s chips or rumen collars or virtual fencing … they were already there doing it.”

Matt calls the EID process an “enabler”.

“It enables us to get accurate information to make decisive decisions, on time, every time; we call it the enabler. One, it helps our managers to have up-to-date information and enables our junior shepherds to operate at a different level as well.”

Lynley says once the junior staff understand the process and what they’re reading, it helps them make decisions out in the paddock. They know the weights and the growth rates and if they can improve one mob that knowledge is useful across the whole business.

“You only have to make small incremental gains by tweaking things and you can get a higher growth over 15,000 lambs, which is quite significant,” Matt adds.

Specific on-farm trials have also shown less need for animal health spending and cut other wastage out of their business.

“We know what does and doesn’t work for us.

It’s not necessarily what the EID tagging earns you or makes you, but what it saves you.”

But there’s also the gains achieved because of the competitive nature of their team.

“If one guy is doing 320 grams a day and another guy is doing 120, he starts asking the other guy why. Suddenly, they want to step up to another level.”

Another successful trial was the use of docking scales two years ago after frustration with the EID tags only going on at weaning.

“The first time you get the tag in, the second time you get data. One bit of information is a dot, the second piece of information is a line. The third piece is a trend. If we didn’t put a tag on until weaning, we didn’t get any information until February. Now we tag in October and it’s easier to

“When you weigh with EID you get five, six or 10 things, whatever information you want – different groups, traits, animal health, paddocks, feed regimes, twins/ singles, breed – whatever you decide. We’re always finding ways to use it. Like anything, when you start out you grow with it and find out what else it can do for you.”

Wairarapa farmers Lynley and Matt Wyeth say Allflex offers much more to their business than just a supply of plastic tags.

FARM DETAILS OWNERS: Matt & Lynley Wyeth AREA: 2100ha - 1400ha eff

STOCK NUMBERS: 15000su FARM SYSTEM: Breeding/ finishing sheep and beef

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

plan the farms, feed budgets and to book space in the lead up to Christmas.”

Linking the kill information is another level of data.

“We can see the different ones being rotationally grazed and set stocked, the ones that had a B12 on the docking board, the ones grazed on plantain or rape, the ones with a pre-lamb worm drench. We did a check last year on the difference between tape drench and a triple. You have that information in front of you to make those management decisions. Why wouldn’t you?”

The Wyeths want to utilise as much information as they can.

“We just wouldn’t go and weigh stock, for example, without EID because you’re only going to get one piece of information. When you weigh with EID you get five, six or 10 things, whatever information you want – different groups, traits, animal health, paddocks, feed regimes, twins/singles, breed – whatever you decide. We’re always finding ways to use it. Like anything, when you start out you grow with it and find out what else it can do for you.

“It’s when you start getting results and making active decisions because of it that the rewards come.”

The latest thing for the couple is genomics, which needs EID to be accurate down to individual animals.

“We’re a commercial farm but we’re effectively working like a stud farm. It’s indexing on steroids with a lot more accuracy.

We won’t buy rams or bulls from people who aren’t using this

latest technology because it’s not keeping up with our latest technology.”

They have done some genomics recently with their heifers through Inherit Selection (Zoetis) that means they can use AI to tailor-mate each heifer to a specific bull that best suits her.

“We can really hone in; EID is giving us that connection.”

It is likely to be expanded to include the ewe hoggets.

“There is a cost, but what is the cost of not doing it. We need to increase a kilo on hoggets so potentially we’re looking to do 3000 hoggets and find out, with complete confidence, if these animals are capable to doing what we want our future sheep to do.”

Genetic mapping showed the potential of the flock, but Matt says going down to an individual basis will take them to another level of increasing production.

“If we were told the hoggets could do 145% scanning but they’re doing 120%, we’re not letting them express their full genetic potential. We can bust our arse and do a whole lot out there,” he says, pointing to the paddock, “and try to do everything, but without knowing whether the animal is actually able to do what we want, we’re wasting our time. EID is our vehicle to do that. It’s our enabler.”

Matt’s advice for farmers looking at expanding their EID capabilities is to take that first step.

“If you don’t know how it works now, you’re going to miss the next level and all of a sudden the game is going to be far advanced and you’re not going to be able to catch up.

RAISE THE BAA

17

“We do a range of things down to intensive triplet management; I’m not saying everyone should go there, but at least take that one step and start scanning for them. Once you do that, look at how you feed them. It’s a staircase. Don’t miss five steps and try to jump into the deep end, but gradually get on board. Every farm is different, and it must suit the farmer and how they’re running their business, so find your own way. But keep taking that one step forward.”

The tools are available from a commercial point of view, Matt says.

“We’re getting the dollar benefit at the end of the day. Part of sustainable farming is to stay in business, so we need to have money. If we can farm more efficiently and easily and be kind to the environment, then it’s a win in all fronts.”

The couple used to give a small proportion of lambs to Matt’s father.

“He used to grow them at about 440g a day. If we were sitting at 300 then, what was in-between was the opportunity. I know he only had a small number of lambs to concentrate on but imagine if we could duplicate that over 15,000 lambs.”

Information gleamed from EID has led to Spring Valley Enterprises selling excess ewe lambs for the first time last year.

“Because of what we’re doing with breeding, we’ve been able to market our lambs quite differently. With our proven ewe record, that we can demonstrate through 15 years of scanning data and weaning weights, the proof

18

RAISE THE BAA

is in the pudding. We know all this information about them … so we’re selling them as genetic ewe lambs and getting a premium for it. It also helps us offload stock earlier, which helps the whole farm system with flexibility for summer.”

They could do the same with the genomic testing of the heifers, having tested 150 but only needing 60 for themselves.

The Wyeths follow their stock information through Farm IQ to benchmark themselves against the dozen other different summer wet, breeding/finishing farms in the Wairarapa-Wellington zone.

“We like setting that benchmark. If we’re behind, we want to know why.”

They also enter awards and competitions for the same reason.

“We don’t enter to win, but to see if we’re doing any good on a regional or national scale,” Lynley says.

They’ve proven their business economically with the Wairarapa Farm Business of the Year, environmentally with the Ballance Farm Environment Awards, stock wise with the Glammies, Steak of Origin, hogget competition and Silver Fern Farms Gate to Plate, and industry-wise with innovation awards.

“It’s good for our staff too. We want them to be proud of our land and our stock, so we enter as a team and they’re a big part of that.”

One of the latest extra activities on the farm agenda has been planting 20,000 natives at Ratanui.

“They’re not EID-tagged though,” Lynley says, laughing.

ABOVE: Valley ewe lambs: Spring Valley’s 2019 selected ewe lambs, all carrying Allflex EID tags.

FARM TO FORK TRACEABILITY

ENGINE ROOM

of a trusted supply chain

N

EW ZEALAND PROTEIN is highly regarded around the world, with strong markets for both red meat and dairy products. Allflex Livestock Intelligence solutions provide New Zealand farmers with individual data collection opportunities using EID tags and tissue sampling, as well as livestock health and welfare information through the use of animal monitoring and milking intelligence.

Combine the Allflex solutions with both Farm IQ and IdentiGEN, additional businesses within the MSD Animal Health portfolio, and farmers will have access to complete farm to fork traceability solutions covering DNA based tracing, animal health and individual livestock data.

This cross-business collaboration remains in its infancy with MSD acquiring Allflex Livestock Intelligence in April 2019, a share in FarmIQ in March 2020 and acquisition of IdentiGEN in August 2020.

It does however, emphasise the commitment to providing end-to-end animal traceability solutions at industry scale to improve the health and safety of animals and ensure even greater transparency in our food supply.

Farmers applying Allflex EID sheep tags for potential premium market opportunities can be confident that we have strong relationships with processors and now the wider capability to link end products with animal genetics and farming methods for trusted, proven traceability.

LIFETIME ELECTRONIC RECORD CREATED Linked to a DNA sample ANIMAL

Growth rates, Health treatments, Scanning results, Trait selection, Parentage.

CONSUMER

Product traceability and origin validated using IdentiGEN. Animal DNA and history available. Trust established.

DATA COLLECTION Individual weights, traits, scanning results, culling decisions and health treatments recorded in FarmIQ.

PROCESSOR EID and DNA paired. ÈÁ!R0«³R ¨ Products validated to meet ç È« Á JnXz0 R0«0 premium market requirements.

Kill sheets sent to FarmIQ for farmer to review.

RAISE THE BAA

19

AUTOMATING SCANNING DATA

BY TONY LEGGETT

Lamb weaning formula

TICKS ALL THE BOXES

B

ETTER MATCHING OF feed at set stocking time to ewe scanning data is the primary driver for the continued use of electronic identification tags in the sheep flock of Ian Hopkins and Shelley Dew-Hopkins.

The couple farm a 540ha (effective) hill country property at Rangiwahia, north of Feilding, Manawatu.

They were participants in the original FarmIQ pilot programme which gave them an early insight into the power of more data and its capacity to provide deeper traceability for meat processing partner Silver Fern Farms.

The programme paid tagging costs for their entire lamb drop from 2013 to 2017, but the Hopkins have continued to tag each year’s ewe hogget replacements since the programme ended. They have moved from Allflex button EID tags to the company’s RapID tags and find they work well.

“We view the tags as a cost of being in business these days,” Shelley says.

The tags provide the opportunity to easily record scanning information on individual ewes, liveweights through the year, and increasingly, body condition score data which the Hopkins know can help them elevate their flock’s performance to a higher level, especially for lamb weight gain and average time to

20

RAISE THE BAA

slaughter. They’ve concentrated initially on gathering individual scanning data so they can make better feed allocation decisions at set stocking time, primarily to improve the number of lambs available for slaughter at weaning time.

“We now have five-six years of scanning data on some ewes, and we’re set stocking on both number of lambs and lambing date to make best use of available feed,” Ian says.

Their scanner, Mike Hare, scans each ewe as carrying either a single, twin or triplet lamb, and also as an early, mid or late lamber for both their maternal and terminal flocks.

The twin and triplet, early and mid-lambing groups are set stocked on the safe hills adjacent to their easy country which is set up with specialist lamb finishing forages and new ryegrassclover pasture. As each mob is docked, they are moved on to these ‘high-octane’ finishing areas until weaning.

This move also frees up space for the singles and later multiple lambs to be spread out as they are docked across more of those easier hills, helping lift liveweight gains in those lambs too.

This pattern has already yielded considerably better performance from their predominantly Romney ewe flock.

The Hopkins used to struggle to get lambs away at acceptable weights at weaning in late December or early

LEFT: Ian Hopkins and Shelley Dew-Hopkins were early adopters of electronic identification tags in the ewe flock on their property at Rangiwahia, Manawatu.

ABOVE: Scanner Mike Hare and farm co-owner Ian Hopkins at scanning earlier this year. Data is now loaded automatically into the Hopkins’ weigh scale reader so they can develop set stocking mob plans and allocate feed more accurately to higher priority mobs. RIGHT: The clever device created by Ian Hopkins and a local hardware developer to automate the uploading of extra scanning data on each ewe in their flock.

FARM DETAILS

AREA: 692ha, 670ha effective, 131ha leased out, currently farming 540ha effective STOCK: 2700 ewes, 660 ewe hoggets, 140 mixed age cows, 35 R2 heifers, 35 R1 heifers, 108 R2 trading cattle MATING DATE: Rams out March 25 for terminal flock and April 15 for maternals TOPOGRAPHY: 133ha flat (24%), 375ha medium hill; 32ha steep hill, 20ha retired, 131ha leased out till June 2021 WEANING DATES: December 10 terminals, January 5 A mob LAMB WEANING WEIGHT 2019: 30kg average; % prime at weaning: 20% (18.2kg) YARD INFRASTRUCTURE: Auto-drafter, tag reading panels and portals, weigh scales, stick readers ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tags

January. But last summer, their early multiple lamb mobs produced 900 prime lambs at 18-18.5kg in two drafts in late December and early January out of a total of about 1600 lambs on that easier country.

“Three years ago, we never got lambs away till late January and often at lighter carcase weights. To get that number away by early January is huge for us up here especially given the drought that hit earlier this year,” Shelley says.

To make the task of collecting full pregnancy data at scanning time easier and error free, Ian contacted a local computer hardware developer to help build a clever ‘add-on’ to automate the uploading direct to their weigh scale unit.

Each ewe’s ear tag is now scanned and saved as it enters the scanning crate where the scanner then records its number of lambs and lambing period on the data recorder with the click of buttons which automatically updates the weigh scale unit.

“We were doing that manually before and it was stressful and not always that accurate. The EID tags are easy enough to read but keeping up with recording that scanning information manually was quite challenging,” he says.

“As soon as the scanner has finished each mob, we know exactly how many singles, twins and triplets we’ve got, and

we also know how many of each group are early, mid or later lambing,” Ian says.

From that data, the Hopkins create their set stocking plan, which also defines their docking plan and management of mobs on to their crops and new grass.

Their next priority will be to add more liveweight and body condition score data so they can improve ewe performance through better matching feed to specific groups of ewes at critical times of year.

“Getting weights is easy with EID tags.

It’s just a quick run through the yards and the data is collected conveniently for us,” Shelley says.

The scanning data is also enabling better ewe culling decisions and evaluating ewes to drop out of the maternal flock into their terminal mob. They are already marking twin or triplet-born ewe lambs at docking time and selecting replacements mostly from them in late January or early February.

Ian is responsible for the analysis of the scanning information. He says his background in computer science is a major help when it comes to creating spreadsheets and sorting data.

“I can understand that some farmers might struggle especially if they have less experience than someone like me. But it’s all learnable and there is support out there for anyone who strikes a problem,” Ian says.

RAISE THE BAA

21

EWE SCANNING

ELECTRONIC TAGS EASY for ewe scanners

E

XPERIENCED ANIMAL SCANNER Mike Hare predicts more commercial ewe flocks will embrace electronic identification ear tagging in the future.

So far, only two of his commercial flock clients on his lower North Island scanning run have tagged all their ewes with EID tags. But he expects more will go the same way in the future.

“It’s something all scanners will be seeing more and more of,” he says.

“It doesn’t slow down the actual scanning of each ewe for me, so there’s no issue there for scanners to be concerned about.”

He says both of his two clients with EID tagged ewes are recording dries, singles, twins and triplets against the tag numbers as they are scanned and also marking each group with raddle.

The raddle is a back-up but also allows for a quick draft-up if two groups of ewes are put into the same pen as they leave the scanning box.

He is also allocating one farm’s ewes into four 10-day lambing periods – early, mid, late and very late. When this was handled solely using different spray raddle marks, it slowed the scanning process down a little. But now, with the use of a second counter, Mike can scan each ewe, ‘count’ its pregnancy status and allocate it to one of four lambing periods using the second counter.

Thanks to a unique piece of hardware developed by the farm owner and a local developer, each ewe’s tag number is recorded as it enters the scan box in the farm’s weigh reader, along with its pregnancy status and likely lambing period (see article previous page).

Setting up to scan usually takes about 10 minutes for a typical client, and slightly longer when a farm has EID tagged ewes because of the need to set up the extra electronics.

From his Feilding base, Mike scans between 170,000 and 180,000 ewes each year, mostly in lower North Island.

22

RAISE THE BAA

Each ewe’s tag number, number of lambs and lambing period is recorded automatically to the Hopkins’ weigh reader as each ewe is scanned. This makes preparing a set stocking plan a very easy exercise.

He also operates an artificial insemination run for Livestock Improvement Corporation in the Manawatu region.

“I also do pregnancy scanning for cattle and have a sheep scanning run in Western Australia which takes me out for most of April each year. Of course, I didn’t get over there this year with Covid-19 travel restrictions.”

He described his NZ run this year as a “rollercoaster”.

“Some flocks had their worst scanning ever and a few had their best.”

It was also notable for the mostly lower percentages of dry ewes.

Rugged, robust and designed for New Zealand conditions And we’re only just getting started...

When it comes to durability, the RS420 reader punches well above its weight.

Known for its comfortable grip and easy to read screen, this reader provides farmers with full cattle, deer and sheep EID compatibility, along with an on-farm backup service.

Keep an eye out for our new range of readers that’ll make data collection even easier for farmers. Available in early 2021, talk to our team for more information. Proven products, proven support, proven performance.

www.allflex.global/nz

RAISE THE BAA

23

ID PRODUCT MANAGER MARK McMANAWAY

Continuous improvement assured with Allflex tags

“That’s one of the benefits of working with some of the largest stud and commercial flocks in the country - we are continuously being tested in the field.”

24

RAISE THE BAA

G

OING BACK FIVE years

or so commercial farmers would say “when lambs are worth $100 I’ll be quite happy to put a two dollar EID tag in” – we’re well beyond that return now but many are still putting in a 50 cent flexi tag and missing out on a range of valuable information available through EID tags.

I’ve been with Allflex for more than 10 years and as ID Product Manager I’m focused on the quality control aspect of the business.

Making sure products going out the door are performing as expected, completing field trials and staying across the latest developments coming out of our global team.

GRAB THE DATA AND MAKE USE OF IT I’M ON-FARM most weeks and I’m

seeing a lot of younger farmers, in particular, coming through that are really keen to grab data and make use of it.

The uptake of EID sheep tags are increasing across the board and for a range of different reasons.

The stud guys grabbed it with open arms initially for parentage, and once the data started coming through the additional benefits became an added bonus. It was incredibly easy to create draft lists from that data back at the home office and load it up at the drafter in the yards.

They could create lists based on particular traits in ewes or rams, specific to their stud which you just couldn’t do

manually, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to go through screeds of paper picking out animal traits to draft on - so this has been a gamechanger for a lot of them.

A few years ago a large stud had a mob of rams to draft and they were pulling out a group for certain traits that they were going to do a DNA test on.

Without electronic tags, this draft would have taken them most of the day.

Using EID, they started at 6.30am and were finished up by 7.30am before the boss had even arrived to help.

The flow-on into commercial flocks is for those farmers really chasing production in everything that they do.

Again, the benefits continue to grow, such as being able to be really specific with health treatments, create A/B flocks and have the ability to do on-farm trials and measure the results without running separate mobs.

We have farmers trialing growth rates on different crops, using certain trace elements and treatments on a select few.

One farmer used a trace element in the lowest pick of his lambs, and he saw a 10% increase in weight gain in that group of lambs.

He didn’t need to split the mob off to monitor them, he just noted the treatment against their EID tag and could monitor results when he ran the whole flock through the drafter. This farmer wasn’t deficient in this trace element, he was just interested in testing a theory.

There are a lot of farmers only EID

ID PRODUCT MANAGER MARK McMANAWAY

tagging 10-20% of a mob and running them regularly over the scales, adjusting feed accordingly etc. It’s quite a common way to get started with the technology and takes out the law of averages in total mob weight.

You might know that the mob is going up, but it might be the top ones going up, bringing up the average weight and there’s actually a group that aren’t performing and will ultimately take a lot longer to finish or be in poor condition pre-tup etc.

You can do all of this without running them separately, setting each animal up for success.

for these guys and we welcome the expectation that when they need to talk to someone or get something sorted, we are available to manage that relationship.

For Allflex, it’s very much a two-way conversation and a lot of our innovation has come directly from the pain points that New Zealand farmers have felt over the years.

We run typical field trials for new products, but because we’ve got such big numbers relying on us, we’re always

LISTENING TO OUR CUSTOMERS

NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHES

from Turanganui Romneys was a large influencer of the creation of the RapID EID tag almost 11 years ago. “You need an EID version of the flexi tag so we can tag quickly in big mobs” he told the team and we were quick to innovate and provide a solution.

This product then went through intense market testing with the Farm IQ pilot programme and has gone on to be the most widely used EID tag in the market.

Turanganui Romneys still use RapID tags across their flock, tagging around 8000 lambs a year.

That’s one of the benefits of working with some of the largest stud and commercial flocks in the country - we are continuously being tested in the field.

We know the importance of performance

is a new range of readers in 2021. These are hand-held readers that will make it even easier for farmers to collect data through EID tags and have some great advancements in pairing technology as well.

We’ve got the RS420 stick reader already performing well in the market and these new readers will be an expansion in our reader product range for our New Zealand farmers.

EID tags are really just the next stage in flock performance. Changing farming practices from dealing with whole flocks, to drafting out under-performers, creating A and B flocks, improving individual ewe conditions and culling out certain traits or genetics.

There’s plenty of scope for both stud and commercial flocks in this space.

WAIRARAPA FARMER MIKE Warren

refining and monitoring our entire range for things like retention and performance in tough conditions.

ONE OF THE upcoming product releases

RAISE THE BAA

25

MANAGEMENT BENEFITS

BY HEATHER CHALMERS

EXTRA KNOWLEDGE

gained without the added workload

U

sing EID tags assists as a management tool in the sheep flock without creating more work, says North Canterbury sheep and beef farmer Tom Costello.

Tom and his son Tim Costello, who farm The Grange, near Hawarden, have their entire sheep flock EID tagged.

While Tom admits he doesn’t do a lot with the data, having the flock EID tagged has some handy uses.

As well as 2800 Wairere Romney ewes and 700 hogget replacements, The Grange also runs Friesian bulls until two years old and about 360kg carcase weight. These arrive at the farm at a range of ages, with some reared by the Costellos as four-day-old calves, and others bought as weaned calves and yearlings.

The Costellos started EID tagging their young sheep as part of the Farm IQ pilot programme. “That continued for about five years, so most of our sheep were EID tagged while

26

RAISE THE BAA

we were in that programme.” While the tags were free during the pilot scheme, the Costellos continued with them once it finished, despite the added cost.

Tom says the tags allow him to monitor the performance of his ewe flock.

“We retain a file of the sheep that have twins and singles.

It does give us the ability to auto-draft those sheep off.”

“We record any ewe hoggets that are dry, so it is easy to identify them if they are dry again.”

When putting the hoggets through the Racewell scales, he can programme it to draft off those that aren’t in-lamb, so these can be put on different feed. This can be done without having to mark ewes with raddle.

About 80 per cent of ewe hoggets have a lamb.

While in the Farm IQ pilot, the Costellos did a couple of small trials. One was to determine whether there was any difference in weight gain before weaning between lambs that were tailed and those that weren’t.

FARM DETAILS OWNERS: Tom, Anne and Tim Costello, The Grange, Hawarden, North Canterbury AREA: 550ha of flat land

STOCK: 2800 Wairere Romney ewes, 700 hoggets CATTLE: Friesian bulls, 150 rising two-year-old and 150 rising one-year-old RAINFALL: 600mm-700mm

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

LEFT: Tim Costello and his father Tom were early adopters of FarmIQ, the farm data management package that helps with farm management decisions on their North Canterbury property.

BELOW: Tom Costello shepherding a mob of multipleborn lambs on his Hawarden property.

RIGHT: A tagged ewe with triplets.

When tailing a pen of lambs, the last 20 were left untailed and their tag number recorded.

“It turned out there was no difference in weight gain.”

It was also useful to have a few EID tags in lambs being finished, to monitor the weight gain of this sample group and how well they were doing. The weigh indicator gives an instant weight gain when it picks up a tag that has been through at an earlier date.

“Where it is useful is the things that you can do without creating more work.

“We don’t want to get into a lot of extra work trying to record stuff, so we are just doing stuff that is easy,” Tom says.

The fold-around Allflex RapID tag also seemed quite robust, with a low loss rate.

At The Grange, sheep are run year round on pasture, with little supplementary feeding, apart from grain feeding during any drought period. On the farm’s light country, feed quality was boosted by an established seed bank of subterranean clover, as well as some lucerne.

Cattle were farmed on the heavier ground and wintered on crops. “We run a proportion of cattle as they are less work than sheep. I’d run more cattle, but we are probably too dry.”

While annual rainfall averaged 700mm, in recent years it had been only around 600mm.

The Grange was looking at adding 150ha of irrigation, potentially next spring, as part of a revised Hurunui Irrigation Scheme now operated by the Amuri Irrigation Company (AIC). The proposed piped scheme will irrigate about 4000ha around Hawarden and Waikari.

The AIC, which irrigates more than 28,000ha of land in the Amuri basin around Culverden purchased the Hurunui Water Project’s resource consents in 2018, after an earlier proposal failed to get sufficient support to progress.

Tom says that with his son Tim coming in to the farm business, the next generation might be keener to more fully utilise the EID tag data.

Related software would also continue to improve and become more userfriendly. “We don’t rush into buying software as it is always evolving and I’d rather wait until it gets better. In another few years, the software and equipment we use with our tags will become easier,” Tom says.

RAISE THE BAA

27

ON-FARM TRIALS

BY KATE TAYLOR

BREED COMPARISON

trial underway at Castlepoint

T

HE PACIFIC OCEAN forms a spectacular 12km boundary for Castlepoint Station in Wairarapa.

Owned by Anders and Emily Crofoot, the 3700ha coastal hill country property has a mixture of flats, rolling hills and steeper hills with only 300ha cultivatable, 408ha of scrub and bush and 212ha of forestry. This season it wintered 13,700 breeding ewes and replacements along with 800 beef cows and replacements.

The 2012 Wairarapa Sheep and Beef Farm Business of the Year is predominantly a store property but has recently increased its winter trading component, particularly through Coastal Lamb.

The station has used Allflex EID tags for the past 10 years.

As a self-confessed “techie” with a degree in computer science, Anders Crofoot says electronic tags had an intrinsic attraction.

“I’d been following electronic tags since originally they were only put in racehorses and companion animals. At US$50 to $100 a pop, you weren’t going to put them into sheep,” he says, laughing, “but as the price came down, there would be a point where we would get enough advantages that it would make sense to start tagging them… and here we are.”

Crofoot was a member of the Federated Farmers National Board when the introduction of the NAIT system meant tagging of cattle became compulsory. But with sheep, it came when Massey University approached the station to do a trial following the lifetime of one age group.

“So that age group was tagged as lambs, so they were sorted; at

28

RAISE THE BAA

the time we had around 20,000 sheep, so doing them all in one shot wasn’t going to make a whole lot of sense. Massey tagged the first age group and then the next year Allflex approached us to trial the tags, so that was the second age group sorted. Then by the third year, it was all working fine so it became part of the farm budget.”

He says it was a real innovation of Allflex to introduce RapID strap tags for improved retention. Every year, the station tags all replacement ewe lambs in a bid to record lifetime performance.

IT’S A CONVENIENT TOOL “Once you have it in place and have the equipment for dealing with it, it’s a really handy tool. There was a real reduction in errors from misreading tags or writing them down wrong. It’s also a whole lot easier when you’re weighing, the system just does it. So it takes the labour and time factor out as well as improving the accuracy.”

He says the EID gives the business more flexibility.

“The automated weigh system made recording a lot easier and the EID takes it one more step.”

You’re still getting those average weights but can start looking at a lifetime performance as well. You can do that manually but it’s just so much work.”

One of the early drivers in the use of EID was as a culling tool.

“Most people take the tail-enders, patch them up and stick them back in the main mob. With EID if that animal comes back to your attention, losing weight or becomes a tail, you’re better to get rid of them rather than keep patching them up.”

FARM DETAILS

OWNERS: Emily & Anders Crofoot

LOCATION: Castlepoint, coastal Wairarapa

AREA FARMED: 3,700ha, 300ha cultivatable, 2,654hills, 212ha forestry, 408ha scrub/bush, 106ha other STOCK NUMBERS: MA Ewes 6,692, 2T Ewe 3,657, Ewe Hoggets 3366, Trade lambs 2,843, Rams 115 (Romney w/ 630 mid-micron cross hoggets and 3 mid micron rams) MA Cows 384, MA Steer 2, 2Yr Heifer 228, 2Yr Steer 104, Yearling Heifer 202, Yearling Steer 205, Sire Bulls 14 (Angus w/ 3 Wagyu bulls) FARM SYSTEM: Predominately a store property.

Recently have increased our winter trading component. In Firstlight program using Wagyu as terminal sire of first calving heifers (sell weaners).

Winter trade lambs with Coastal Lamb.

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

LEFT: A mixed-age ewe carrying its Allflex RapID tag, with twin lambs at foot.

ABOVE: Castlepoint Station co-owner Anders Crofoot.

He says they’ve also done trials from lambing to weaning, checking on weight gains.

“You can do that with sample weights, but what we’ve done is tagged at docking, so we can follow the individual weights through. Normally we would tag them in autumn when we’re close to knowing whether they’re staying or not. We’ve tagged lambs when we’ve done weight gain trials but we tend to only to tag the replacements as a matter of course.”

SMALL ON-FARM TRIALS ARE ALSO EASIER “If you want to try something with a different feed or different animal health treatment you have a way of identifying all the animals and then following them.

You can work with a small group, give them a treatment, for example, and then mix them back in and then pull them out later to check things out. We don’t do a lot of that but it’s nice to have that capability.”

He says it’s not until an individual ewe has more data, such as weight gain, condition scores, scanning results or special treatment, that EID becomes useful for selection pressure.

“There is definitely a phase you go

through where you’re collecting it but only using it occasionally and not as much as you should. We’ve settled on using Farm IQ instead of lots of spreadsheets, which gives us a database to sift through a lot of information easily. The program does the work for you. We starting to utilise information where we can start to see trends, but again, we’re probably not using it as much as we could. It will be interesting if we include a breed change in those factors, especially with the wool factor.”

Castlepoint Station is doing some work with some mid-micron ewe lambs with a view to considering a breed change away from strong wool. It has put Southern Cross merino rams across a portion of Castlepoint’s traditional Romney ewe flock.

“Merino breeders have been focused on wool, but this group of about six breeders in the South Island is focusing on the other traits as well. … Merinos have a reputation for growing slowly so we’re using EID to make sure we’re not sacrificing growth rates.”

Crofoot says they have bought in some mid-micron cross ewe hoggets that will be similar to Castlepoint’s own first-cross.

“Those sheep don’t look dramatically

different to ours but they are all EID tagged and we can follow them easily in the mob with the rest of the replacement ewe lambs. We did have to separate them for shearing, obviously, with the different wool, and they’ve all been mixed back in.”

“When you start going down to fine wool there is more and more reason to record that information.”

“We’re going to mid micron so I’m not sure if we’ll go down to the level of individual animals but certainly there are people doing that. Wool is highly heritable so that can be quite useful especially in a stud situation.”

Feet can be an issue when trying to move to finer wool, especially in the North Island, he says.

“Historically, they haven’t gained weight as fast but there are some breeders who have been focusing on weight gain recently; with the ewe lambs we’ve bought in, their weight gains are similar to ours. The geneticist said you shouldn’t have to sacrifice lambing percentage or weaning weight and you can still get finer wool, which is worth dramatically more, and if you can achieve that, it’s a real bonus, because it drops straight to the bottom line. It will be a couple of years before we really actually know, but the first indications are positive. Their feet are holding up and the weight gains are similar to our Romneys.”

RAISE THE BAA

29

TISSUE SAMPLING

BY TONY LEGGETT

CLEVER TECHNOLOGIES help give Hinenui the edge

B

EING AN EARLY adopter of clever technologies is helping a leading sheep stud enterprise stay ahead of the competition and expand its business.

Hinenui Genetics is based on the North Island’s East Coast and operates the country’s largest Coopworth recorded flock plus a smaller Romney recorded flock. Both flocks are renowned for producing highly facial eczema tolerant, high growth rate rams.

The business is a family affair. Day-to-day management of their Muriwai property, south down the coast from Gisborne, is in the hands of Ryan Teutenberg, son of Brett and Lucy. Ryan’s sister Deanna and her husband Phil Cook run Hinenui’s other property at Rere, further inland.

In 2002, Brett was an early adopter of using DNA to assign parentage for lambs born in the recorded flocks. This meant the many hours each day spent catching, tagging and matching lambs to ewes for the thousands of lambs born in the stud’s recorded flocks was over.

Instead, a tiny blood sample was collected at docking time and sent away to extract the DNA that allowed them to match each lamb to its dam.

“We single sire mate so we know which sire has been with each

30

RAISE THE BAA

group of ewes. So, parentage is taken care of without a lot of work over lambing time,” Ryan says.

Six years ago, they shifted from collecting blood samples to tissue sampling from each lamb. When combined with the introduction of a clever pre-packed tag and tissue sample collection system, Ryan says the tedious days of docking ended.

“We were using blood cards up until about six years ago and they were an absolute pain. Tissue sampling is so much easier.”

The triple-pack system was developed by Allflex and comes pre-numbered and barcoded, so each lamb has a tissue sample taken for DNA analysis, plus its lifetime electronic identification (EID) tag and a visual tag inserted in three operations down the docking chute.

“These neat little packs from Allflex come with all the bits you need. All we have to write down is the sex of the animal.”

“It meant we went from docking 250 in a typical day, to 700. And that isn’t a strenuous day.”

Last docking, they collected nearly 4000 tissue samples so every animal on their farms is fully DNA profiled.

“The barcode on the tissue sample unit (TSU) has the EID information on it so it makes the process almost error free. We tag and take the sample at docking and it’s a really simple process.”

ABOVE: Mixed-age sire rams bred at Hinenui Genetics for their resilience to facial eczema challenge and their productivity.

RIGHT: Hinenui Genetics Ryan Teuenberg uses an Allflex tissue sampler.

FARM DETAILS

TOTAL AREA: 890ha, 790ha effective (Hinenui 420ha, Makeratu 470ha) STOCK NUMBERS WINTERED: Ewes 2000 recorded, 250 unrecorded Ewe Hoggets 1300 recorded Ram Hoggets 1100 Cows 275 Heifers 113 x R2, 116 x R1 Steers 110 x R2, 116 x R1 CONTOUR: 10% flat/cultivable, 90% steep hill LAMB WEANING WEIGHT 2019: 34kg (average) ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: HDX lightweight button paired with TSU

Hinenui Genetics use Shepherd Complete, available from Zoetis Genetics, to assign parentage.

The samples collected at docking can also be used to identify genetic traits, including meeting requirements to achieve FEGold status in both their Romney and Coopworth flocks.

They record information through Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL) and focus on the five goal traits - reproduction, survival, growth, meat and wool. Aside from facial eczema tolerance, growth and meat are the core traits for Hinenui.

Along with better accuracy, tissue sampling

minimises the disruption at lambing that can occur when tagging lambs at birth.

These days, a daily ride around to check for cast ewes is all that is required during lambing time.

“We still check daily but try to be as hands off as possible. It’s always annoying to see a cast ewe dead,” says Ryan.

Hinenui Genetics was an early adopter of electronic identification for the gains it provides in speed and accuracy.

Ryan can still recall those early days of manually reading brass ear tags. “We had to

RAISE THE BAA

31

spit on the brass tags, and sevens looked like nines sometimes. It was very tedious.”

They progressed to bigger visual tags on the ewes which made it easier to record numbers more accurately but didn’t eliminate the manual recording challenges.

“When we went to DNA sampling nearly 20 years ago, we didn’t have to tag at birth anymore. But then when we went to EID tags a few years ago, that was awesome.”

Tasks like weighing ram lambs is now just a morning’s work so they are weighed more frequently to add accuracy to each ram’s breeding values.

It’s also allowed the family to expand their recorded flocks to meet increasing demand for their rams.

“With Sheep Improvement Limited (SIL), we also know the more information we put in on individual animals, the more we can extract out.”

That extra data is improving selection accuracy which is great for their clients too.

Last mating, the value of EID tagging and tissue sampling to determine parentage was highlighted to the Teutenbergs after they got a surprise at the number of ewes a new sire had tupped without leaving any crayon mark on them.

They noted 120 ewes had harness crayon on them after the ram was removed after two weeks with a mob of ewes. Another sire was introduced a week to 10 days later.

32

RAISE THE BAA

But at scanning time, when their scanner aged the unborn lambs into seven day blocks, they found out this particular ram had tupped 200 ewes in the group, 40% more than had shown up with crayon marks.

“What this showed was can’t rely on harnesses because they aren’t bullet proof. DNA was still needed to ‘clean’ up the data set for us.”

The Teutenbergs say they rarely have cases of tags being lost. When they do come out, another tissue simple is all that’s required to determine which ewe it is in the flock so it can be re-tagged.

In terms of technology at their yards, a panel reader was added to the race before their Racewell weigh crate. Their only other modification was to remove an old fluorescent light from above the reader because it was emitting ‘noise’ and preventing the reader from working correctly.

Ryan sees most opportunity for commercial flock owners who start using EID tags is in improving the growth rate of lambs. Using the FarmIQ app, he says it’s a simple task to take a data set of weights and select the fastest growing lambs, rather than the heaviest at weighing day.

“Which is what you want. High growth rate means you’re getting lambs away earlier and a higher percentage off mum,” he says.

BELOW: Ryan and Claire Teutenberg with their children Emily, Annabelle, and baby Thomas.

There’s a reason why the top breeders choose Allflex.

Tissue sampling makes DNA testing easier “We were using blood cards up until about 5 years ago and they were an absolute pain. Tissue sampling is so much easier. The barcode on the tissue sample has the EID information on it so it makes the process almost error free.

We tag and take the sample at docking and it’s a really simple process. Lambs and ewes are left alone until docking which minimises disruption at lambing.”

Hinenui Genetics, Gisborne Coopworth and Romney breeders

Quality in, quality out and the best customer service in the country.

Contact the team to learn more about our DNA solutions.

www.allflex.global/nz RAISE THE BAA

33

SOFTWARE

BY TONY LEGGETT

SMART FARMIQ APP

enhances data value for farmers

F

armIQ takes much of the effort out of managing farm data, including electronic identification (EID) tags.

Farmers have two main ways to manage EID tag data and other farm information - either through spreadsheets or through FarmIQ - says the company’s senior business manager Garth Nielsen-Vold.

“When you compare the two, FarmIQ is an easier management system for all data, not just EIDs,” he says.

Nielsen-Vold says being able to use FarmIQ to make instant decisions based on market opportunities or feed supplies is what makes the software so valuable.

“Many of our customers are focused on being able to make more informed decisions in the moment, based on data processed in FarmIQ.” “For example, selecting on animal weight today plus expected live weight gain, tells them what their animal weight is likely to be in 21 days, which is hugely valuable information.”

It means farmers can confidently draft off animals that will meet 34

RAISE THE BAA

market requirements at some date in the future. Having individual animals tagged with EID makes weighing, recording weights and providing traceability for any treatments a simple task with FarmIQ. Nielsen-Vold says a major win for farmers tagging individual ewe replacements each year is enhanced replacement selection.

“It’s about replacing animals based on their previous performance and life traits, as opposed to selecting animals just on weight and conformation alone.”

A Wairarapa farmer who has EID tagged replacement ewe lambs invested in FarmIQ to help him monitor individual ewe performance, particularly at the ewe hogget stage.

Like many farmers, he previously selected his heaviest ewe lambs as replacements.

“But it’s likely he’s been selecting a larger portion of his single-born ewe lambs, which are likely to be his less fecund animals. You can only find out this detail by either having a very colourful sheep covered in raddle, or an EID tag.”

Other farmers are now selecting based on enhanced data,

STEADY GROWTH in FarmIQ uptake

LEFT: FarmIQ senior business manager Garth Nielsen-Vold says better decisions can be made more quickly when farmers use EID data and FarmIQ together.

particularly liveweight gain as opposed to liveweight at a particular date. This helps select fast growing multiple-born ewe lambs that have better fecundity compared to singleborn lambs.

“When scanned to see if they are in-lamb as a hogget, these are really the cream of the crop.”

“Having the confidence to sell dry hoggets, and not give them a second chance is highly valuable.”

Another FarmIQ client recently evaluated the performance of his flock based on scanning results.

The total flock scanned an average of 178% but when he segmented out an A-line mob of ewes that had previously scanned with multiples, its scanning percentage was 195% or 17% higher than the average.

THE B-LINE EWES which had previously scanned singles once in their life, scanned a respectable 165%.

The remaining C-line ewes scanned a 141%, 54% lower than the A-line mob.

“So, there’s a clear value in knowing previous scanning results in making up your maternal or A mob.

FARMIQ’S UPTAKE BY farmers is going well says its senior business manager Garth Nielsen-Vold.

He has worked at FarmIQ for the past seven years and looks after many corporate customers and rural professionals nationally, plus farmers across lower North Island.

He also manages a national team of three staff who visit farmers to set them up in FarmIQ and provide ongoing support.

“We are the provider of a system that anyone in the industry can use. We support the users of that system, whether it be key businesses such as CRV, Synlait, or First Light, or farmers directly,” he says.

FarmIQ’s ownership is split between Silver Fern Farms, MSD Animal Health, Farmlands, VetEnt and Pamu. When farmers understand the time saving and information sharing benefits of the system, Nielsen-Vold says they see the value in FarmIQ. It is priced on a range of monthly options based on business size, starting at $40/month. FarmIQ provides a total platform for managing all farm information, across the land, stock, people and compliance.

“FarmIQ is a management tool for all information across the entire business.”

Recording every animal health treatment like drenches and vaccinations is easy with FarmIQ even if reception for the mobile phone is an issue at the yards.

“FarmIQ saves that data on the app, and then sends it when it does get reception as a farmer heads home along the ridge or at some point on the journey,” Nielsen-Vold says.

Learnings from previous data suggests the C-line ewes would most likely be heavier than the B or A lines, and therefore realising a greater feed demand to produce fewer lambs,” he says.

“If you were making a culling decision, say in a dry year like we’ve had in Hawke’s Bay, you could quite happily prune out that C line, leaving yourself with a good chance with your As and Bs.” In another case, Nielsen-Vold says a farm’s top two-tooths, based off selecting previous performance and trait data, scanned 185% compared with the average of the twotooth flock at 178%.

This top line of two-tooth ewes were on average 4kg lighter than the average and they still scanned 7% higher.

“On that farm with 2335 two-tooth ewes, that extra 7% at scanning would have the potential to earn the farm an additional $18,934 at $80/lamb compared with the average when factoring in the savings in ewe feed demand,” he says.

“There’s $8/head extra in those twotooths in their first 24 months of life for this one value.”

One area of potential from EID

tagging is the setting of more sensible flock performance targets and making more beneficial feed allocation decisions, says Nielsen-Vold.

“This is about identifying every flock’s individual targets, as opposed to going with national targets.”

A good example is the widely supported minimum ewe hogget mating weight on May 1 of 40kg.

“This should be the minimum target, as this has been very well researched over many years, however it doesn’t matter where that animal is in the country, breed, management, frame or whatever, it’s still 40kg. Individual flock information better quantifies this target for individual properties.”

“But I’ve got an actual data set from one property that shows the most efficient mating weight for their ewe hoggets is 38kg and another at 42kg. As far as getting these hoggets in lamb, there is no benefit to either farm whatsoever in getting them any heavier.”

Surplus feed can then be better utilised in other areas such as weaning weights, finishing other stock to target weights for slaughter or getting ewes up to mating weights.

RAISE THE BAA

35

WEIGHING UP THE COST

BY ROB TIPA

LEAP OF FAITH

into EID ear tags pays off

W

HEN WAIPAHI SHEEP and beef farmer Marc Cooper originally invested in Allflex EID ear tags for his replacement two-tooth ewes four years ago, it was a leap of faith towards his goal of increasing productivity of the farm’s commercial Coopworth/Texel ewe flock.

At that time he didn’t have the technology to read the ear tags. Since then he has installed a Racewell sheep handler with built-in EID reader to record the data collected and uses a wand as a back-up.

“It’s probably only in the last couple of years that we’ve had the technology to start scanning and reading the information,” he says, but already that early investment is starting to pay off.

Marc originally worked as a livestock disease scientist at the University of Otago and moved on to a successful career in viticulture. But he missed working with stock and eventually

36

RAISE THE BAA

returned to his family’s sheep and beef farm at Clydevale, which has since been sold.

Just over four years ago, he and his wife Naomi were offered an opportunity to enter into an equity partnership with his uncle and aunt, Raymond and Rowena Brock, on a larger twoman property at Waipahi.

Raymond has run the farm for 30 years and done a lot of the development, so the focus for the new partnership has been a fresh start restocking it. Instead of buying in replacement ewe lambs, they are introducing new genetics to breed their own with the goal of improving lamb productivity.

The farm buys Coopworth/Texel rams from Garth Shaw’s Wharetoa Genetics and is already seeing an improvement in lamb performance, with carcase yields at the works increasing.

“Scanning is up 13% this year and even in a dry season last year our scanning was still up, so feeding stock well is a big thing,” Marc says.

“We’re trying to build ewe numbers and would like to get

FARM DETAILS “COOINDA” A 458HA commercial crossbred sheep and beef property (38ha leased, 420ha effective) at Waipahi in South Otago.

FARMED BY MARC AND NAOMI Cooper in partnership with Raymond and Rowena Brock.

EASY, FLAT to rolling country; relatively summer-safe; well-drained heavy soils 60HA OF STEEPER tussock hill country in five blocks used to winter cows.

STOCK NUMBERS WINTERED: 2960 Coopworth/Texel ewes, 740 Coopworth/ Texel hoggets, 40 cows, 120 yearling and R2 cattle depending on the season, store cattle are often bought in to finish winter crops and up to 900 store lambs may be bought in to finish.

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

LEFT: Marc Cooper inoculates a young ewe on the Waipahi sheep and beef farm he and his wife Naomi run in partnership with his uncle and aunt, Raymond and Rowena Brock. ABOVE: Allflex New Zealand’s ID Commercial Lead Steve Kelly meets with Waipahi sheep and beef farmer Marc Cooper, who is using EID ear tags on his ewe flock to increase productivity.

up to lambing 3000 ewes and increase hogget numbers to 800.”

Originally, the decision to use EID ear tags on replacement ewe lambs was to prove the flock’s genetic improvement and ultimately to create an elite mob producing twins.

Marc started by tagging about 950 replacement ewe lambs at weaning four years ago, his selection based on growth rates, conformation and drafting off any small lambs by eye. He has continued this practice every year since.

In future, he may switch to EID tagging replacements earlier (at tailing) so he can record liveweights, which may give him some valuable information on how well their mothers are milking, their mothering ability as well as lamb growth rates.

By next year the whole ewe flock will be tagged and their liveweights will be recorded every time they go through the yards, usually about six times a year.

As a management tool the tags give Marc a good gauge on liveweights and how well the farm is feeding stock.

The property grows both winter and summer crops and buys in a supply of locally grown barley, held in reserve in two on-farm silos for any tight feed spells and flushing ewes.

“If things get tight, (barley) is one of our first avenues.”

With just a couple of season’s results under his belt since he started recording, Marc can already see the value in the EID technology, which gives him an extra tool to draft on weight gain.

“Our average lamb carcae weight is 18.6kgs, which is up over a kilogram on what we have been doing.”

There may be a combination of factors contributing to that improvement, he says, notably the injection of new genetics.

While he has had a few teething problems with the system, he is planning a few modifications to get it up to speed.

“EID tags have definitely had an effect on selecting replacements and we expect better results in the next couple of years,” he says.

“Increasing liveweight gain through selecting ewe hoggets is our focus at the moment.”

“We don’t get hung up on kill weights, but we do target good growth rates to get the lambs off their mothers, growing quickly and off the farm early, which is important.”

Marc starts weaning early singles in the last week of November and aims to have at least 30% of farm-bred lambs off the property by Christmas.

That frees the farm up to buy in store lambs before Christmas and store cattle are bought in at any time of the year to clean up excess winter crop or feed, depending on the season.

Weighing up the financial cost of EID tagging, Marc reckons the returns are already there.

Based on a $6.50 a kg payout on 3,500 lambs killed annually, he estimates an actual ear tag cost of $1.02 each for his ewe hoggets when the cost is spread over all lambs. That figure includes a significant annual cost to run Farm IQ. “When you work back, that is only 150 grams per lamb. So all I’ve got to do to justify that cost is to gain 150 grams per lamb that we sell and to me we’re doing that now.”

The next step for Marc may be to separate ewes with a history of producing singles, twins and triplets into A and B mobs which could be run together during summer and winter to make management easier and then easily drafted into separate mobs for mating and lambing.

“The ideal situation for me would be to have an EID reader in the yards and run stock through it without having to stop and weigh each animal.”

RAISE THE BAA

37

BETTER SELECTION

BY KATE TAYLOR

Detailed history building for top

TARARUA FLOCK

P

OHUETAI FARMS IS building a detailed profile of its flock before working on making the most of the information gained from EID tagging, says manager Daniel Preece.

“We’re analysing it but not utilising it to the full extent… yet.”

The business is a 2174ha (1970ha effective) breeding, finishing and trading property on Otope Road, east of Dannevirke. It has been owned by the Knight family for 135 years.

As well as carrying 528 R1 bulls, 503 R2 bulls and 106 R1 and R2 Angus heifers, the farm has an almost 14,000 strong sheep flock; 5300 Highlander ewes are put to maternal Highlander rams and 4200 to terminal rams, plus 2800 ewes hoggets are put to terminal Primera rams.

“We finish as much of the progeny as we can and store whatever we need to at the time. We can also buy lambs back in to winter finish if we can. That’s just the target.”

About 10% of lambs are killed off mum at weaning at 16.5kg carcase weight with a target of 4000 lambs gone before Christmas.

The farm used to be home to a Focus Genetics Highlander sheep stud until three years ago, which means most of the ewe flock are EID-tagged. Without the stud, the availability of information isn’t essential but makes life easier, he says. For now, the focus is on the ewe hoggets.

“They’re shorn as ewe lambs in February then we get the conveyor in and they get an Allflex EID tag and toxo[plasmosis] vaccine so we know for sure who has had it. If they’re tagged, they’ve had their vaccine and other animal health treatments as replacements.”

With an aim to identify more efficient sheep, Preece says they’re using the EID process to target tail-end ewes and remove them from the breeding flock.

“They’re condition scored as a hogget at weaning, hand on, then we’ll check them pre-tup as a two-tooth then at scanning as a two-tooth. We’re only just getting this information; this is the first time we’ve done it.

Anything light went in with the triplets after scanning to be preferentially fed.

“We’re just talking to the scanner to get him to record that information as he goes, that it’s a lighter ewe, so we can start following it a bit more. As they go to the maternal breeding flock as a four-tooth we’ll check them again. If

38

RAISE THE BAA

they’re light again, they’ll go to a terminal sire with the B mob.”

Preece says he was pretty happy with scanning results this year – 180% for the ewes and 145% for the ewe hoggets – despite the tough, dry season.

“Talking to the local guys, it’s the worst they’ve seen.

The ewes seem to have held up really well but being able to identify lighter animals does give us flexibility to get rid of another class of stock if we need to.”

Lambing starts on August 22 with four start dates depending on the mob and the country they’re on.

Preece is also collecting data on wet dries in the hoggets.

“They’re scanned. There’s no marking of what’s inside them, it’s just recorded, which means there’s nothing on the wool when they’re shorn. Wool buyers don’t want the marks but it’s also to make sorting easier for the woolhandlers too.

“Pre-lamb we’ll draft five ways on weight and number of foetuses from the machine on the EID and then set stocked accordingly based on what type of feed we have. If anything’s a bit light, we can put it on the better feed.”

The information is recorded into Farm IQ but Preece describes it as more of a storage tool as this stage.

“We’re utilising that as more of a diary for that information. It’s good for showing you the actual age structure of the flock, because it gives a full breakdown of every ewe, which in hindsight, means we can set stock the B flock mixed-aged ewes by age off the EID if we need to.

That’s mainly driven by an opportunity to sell ewes with lambs at foot; just another market to try and capture if we need to. It’s that flexibility again.”

Possibilities for the future will become clearer as they follow the ewe lambs through the flock.

“The most beneficial one, along with the lights, will be whether they’ve reared a lamb as a hogget and then no wet dries going into the maternals as a four-tooth. We’re also looking at multiplies only into the A flock, so if they’ve had two years of singles, they’re out.”

Preece started working at Pohuetai Farms 14 years ago as a block manager and now manages the whole operation with the help of two block managers Matt Williamson, who has been there four years, and long-time employee Graeme Webster.

There are also two shepherds, Eilish O’Neill and April Hoera.

TOP: Pohuetai Farms’ ewe hoggets tagged with Allflex RapID tags.

ABOVE: A two-tooth ewe with twin lambs at foot.

RIGHT: Pohuetai Farms manager Daniel Preece.

RAISE THE BAA

39

OMEGA LAMB PROJECT

BY ROB TIPA

EID TAGS CRITICAL

for Headwaters flock improvement

S

TAG VALLEY IS a diverse sheep and beef breeding and finishing operation in the hill country of Northern Southland, home of the elite breeding flock of the Headwaters Group.

This four-way cross of Finn, Texel, Romney and Perendale genetics was founded by Wanaka sheep breeder Andy Ramsden in 2006. It was purposely bred with high levels of fat to thrive in the New Zealand high country.

The group’s breeding programme targets top ewes with high fertility and resilience to produce lambs with strong growth rates and a unique content of beneficial fats that maximise their health properties and taste qualities for consumers. The Omega Lamb Project - a primary growth partnership between the Headwaters and Alliance Groups and the Ministry of Primary Industries - has evolved from this programme with the successful launch of the Te Mana Lamb brand in top-end restaurants in both domestic and international markets.

Owner Simon Saunders says one of his key goals when he joined Headwaters in 2008 was to develop a sheep breed

40

RAISE THE BAA

that suited the type of country his family have farmed since 1965.

“In the early to mid-2000s, there were a lot of dairy conversions going ahead and sheep farming was getting pushed further back into the hills,” he says.

“So we wanted a crossbred sheep that suited the hill and high country. The second goal was to produce an addedvalue product that we could differentiate in the marketplace, which we’ve done with Te Mana Lamb.”

Stag Valley has been using Allflex EID ear tags on its elite Headwaters breeding flock since the first sheep arrived on the property in 2008.

Elite flock lambs are all tagged and DNA tissue samples are routinely taken at the same time to match their DNA with their EID tag.

“We know their parentage through DNA and then do week of conception scanning which means we can give them a birth date.”

Simon says tailing is slower than commercial tailing. They have to be careful that everything matches up “because it is the one time to get it right.”

When Stag Valley started producing Omega lambs for

FARM DETAILS

STAG VALLEY, owned by Simon and Annabel Saunders 1400HA FLAT, rolling to steep hill/ high country at Castlerock, Northern Southland ALTITUDE: 200 - 750 metres

ANNUAL RAINFALL: 1150mm

SHEEP: 5800 Headwaters breeding ewes –

1350 elite flock ewes

1000 two-tooth ewes

3200 mixed-age ewes 1900 hoggets

CATTLE: 165 R1 dairy grazers

100 R1 Wagyu/Dairy cross

85 Angus/Wagyu dairy cross

60 R2 Wagyu/dairy cross

86 Angus MA breeding cows

30 Angus R2 first calvers

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: HDX lightweight button

LEFT: Simon Saunders and stock manager Allen Gregory with a mob of Headwaters two-tooth breeding ewes. ABOVE: Annabel Saunders records EID tag data with a wand while Victoria Baker inoculates a line of Stag Valley’s Headwaters two-tooth ewes. the Te Mana Lamb brand, a condition of supply was that all lambs also had to have an EID tag, a critical element in supplying a premium market.

Over the past four years all commercial lambs, including replacement ewe lambs, have been EID tagged.

Simon says tagging has taken the guesswork out of stock finishing. Historically, the property has always done well breeding stock but its finishing system “hasn’t been anything spectacular”.

Through tagging they have been able to keep much more accurate data on how well lambs are finishing, which has helped them make big changes in how they use specialist forages - chicory, rape in autumn and Italian ryegrasses in spring and autumn - to maximise returns.

“The only way we’ve been able to do that is by collecting good data and being able to measure exactly what we’re doing, so there’s no guess work,” he says. “You know exactly what every animal is doing.”

When mobs of lambs come off different parts of the farm they are weighed and their performance is measured against other parts of the farm or different forages used.

“So that’s been really critical in maximising our returns.”

Simon credits the input of his stock manager Allen Gregory for his technology skills and expertise in lifting and refining their finishing systems with forages over the last four or five years.

Allen says their yards are well set up for five-way drafting, their EID reader is automated so there are no issues handling stock.

Finishing lambs are drafted three or four times through summer and all lambs are generally weighed once a month.

The farm uses FarmIQ to sort and store the data collected on a day-to-day basis to make on-farm decisions but Simon believes there is still some room for improvement in how they review stock performance over the whole season.

He regards EID tags as an “absolutely essential tool” for Headwaters breeding operation and is a requirement for all Omega lambs they supply.

He says tagging has already paid for itself with improvements made in finishing systems alone.

“Over the last two or three years, on average we’ve probably lifted kill weights by a kilogram in lambs and our mean sale date has come down about three weeks, although that is dependent on the season.”

“Probably four or five years ago we were averaging 17.5kg lambs where we’re averaging over 18.5kg now.”

Although commercial replacement ewe lambs have been tagged with EID tags for the last four years, this is the first season Stag Valley has started collecting data on the commercial breeding operation.

“We have collected scanning data and will look to start collecting condition scores in the near future.”

He believes the next big breakthrough in technology will be when commercial sheep farmers can easily collect data on parentage.

“That’s when EID will make a huge difference in terms of profitability of our sheep systems because we’ll be able to make decisions on how well those ewes are performing based on the amount of lamb they are growing at weaning. At the moment that is very difficult.”

He believes there are huge opportunities in driving efficiency and profitability in many commercial ewe flocks when farmers have parentage data in a commercially available format.

That technology is still evolving and will keep getting better with software packages that are easier for farmers to use.

“I think the cost of tags will keep coming down so they will be more cost effective in future.”

RAISE THE BAA

41

Cream of the flock.

Meet the A team – Allflex’s nationwide team of identification experts that bring a wealth of knowledge from the industry to the yards. Proudly working with farmers and rural distributors to refine, improve and increase overall livestock performance, regardless of flock size.

With customer service and relationships at the forefront of everything we do, the focus is on what matters most - quality in, quality out. An Allflex relationship starts with a conversation, and often flows through two or three generations. Tried and tested the world over, Allflex is proud to stand alongside many of New Zealand’s most progressive sheep and beef farmers.

Elle Perriam

Duncan Steans

Steve Kelly

elle.perriam@allflex.co.nz 027 224 4470

duncan.steans@allflex.co.nz 027 446 5508

steve.kelly@allflex.co.nz 027 560 2699

South Island

42

RAISE THE BAA

Upper North Island

ID Commercial Lead

Austin Heffernan

Mark McManaway

Charlotte Groundwater

austin.heffernan@allflex.co.nz 027 563 2282

mark@allflex.co.nz 027 517 6693

charlotte.groundwater@allflex.co.nz 027 306 1644

National Sales Manager

ID Product Manager

Central North Island

RAISE THE BAA

43

FOCUS ON OUTCOMES

BY TONY LEGGETT

Smart tag

INVESTMENT EASY DECISION 44

RAISE THE BAA

P

OTENTIAL VALUE GAINED far exceeds the $2 per head cost of putting an electronic identification (EID) tag in the ear of every ewe lamb in the country, says genetics consultant and farmer Will Gibson.

He admits being a strong advocate for collecting individual animal data using Allflex EID tags comes easily from his role with genetics consultancy neXtgen Agri.

“I know there’s a heap of value to come out of EID tagging by actually finding out what a flock is doing, without really doing any more work,” he says.

“Most farmers already have technology in their yards to weigh their stock. They’ve been putting a hand on their animals to condition score, and they’re getting scanning data so they can store it all against an animal for its lifetime, not just a one-off.”

“If you’ve got some sort of computer background, the data is easy to store it and pull it together. Otherwise there are people out there like ourselves that do that for them.”

Before tagging any sheep or cattle with EID tags, Gibson advises farmers to really focus on what data they want to collect and what they want to gain from it.

Common intentions among his clients are farmers wanting to compare ram sources, make breed changes, and improve culling decisions to lift profitability.

He advises commercial farmers to start by tagging ewe lambs at tailing time, rather than tagging retained ewe hogget replacements because it provides an extra year of performance data to improve future decisions.

When tagged at tailing time, each ewe lamb’s birth rank (single or multiple) is known and it is easy to collect a weaning weight to rank each lamb on weight gain to weaning. Another weight in autumn provides further growth rate data, which can assist with culling and mating decisions as a hogget. Knowing if they were born a single or multiple based on their birth rank adds extra insight for both culling and mating.

He says there is a range of data analysis options available, depending on a farmer’s own computer knowledge and software provided by tag or reader technology companies.

Some of his clients choose to manage it all themselves, using mobile phone application supplied with the tag reader to either process data in the sheep yards or on their home computer, or through to a bureau like neXtgen Agri operates.

“Say one of my clients has just finished doing weights on a mob, they’ll connect their phone to their data capture device and next minute I’ve got an email sitting in my inbox of the session. Then I pull that down to an Excel spreadsheet to sort all of that data and email it back to my client.”

“It’s utilizing the right people for the right job. If you’ve come back to a farm coming from an analysis job in say a LEFT: A Merino sire from the ram team on the Gibson family’s Foulden Hills property at Middlemarch.

bank where you do have good Excel skills and a reasonable computer understanding, well those issues aren’t going to be hard to do that.”

Gibson says a simple Excel spreadsheet is ideal in most cases for presenting data back for selection decisions to be made. Most farmers using FarmIQ have integrated their data collection and analysis with the software.

Gibson says one of the best examples of making more informed decisions based on individual animal identification was a client who was transitioning his Romney flock to halfbred Merino.

He wanted to evaluate how the progeny from four different Merino ram sources performed as Halfbreds, so started in 2018 by mating them in four groups to rams from four different studs.

The ewe lambs were tagged at tailing time and then grouped up and run together from weaning right through to their first scanning as a two-tooth.

“Three mobs did about 130% at tailing time, and one lot came in at 162%. However, the farmer wouldn’t have known that unless he had an EID tag in their ears.”

Having that individual ewe data meant he could make a more informed choice and source rams from the best stud for his property and stock.

Another good example was the farmer who split his flock into three groups for mating. At scanning time when they had been mobbed up on winter rotation, the data showed that two mobs had conceived at a typical level, but the third mob had 20% dries.

Further analysis explained the drop in conception – a problem with water in the block where they were being mated.

“So that had given them a check, and then they had a couple of rams die on them in that mob as well, so that’s why the lower scanning happened.”

Other farmers Gibson works with are using the tags to evaluate animal performance on different crops or pasture mixes.

“There is huge scope to learn more from managing individual animals rather than a mob of animals. EID tags and the technology that is now available just takes the time and effort out of collecting it, processing and storing it for use at a later date.”

The ease of collection means that every time stock is in the sheep yards, there’s the opportunity to collect data.

Once collected, Gibson says it’s amazing what use it can be put to.

Culling decisions in times of a feed shortage can also be greatly improved based on individual animal performance, especially when liveweight or age are rudimentary criteria for culling decisions to be made from.

With EID tags holding an animal’s performance history, a farmer could pull a list of tags to be culled, load it into an auto-drafter and it automatically splits the mob on pre-set criteria.

“If you dive into the data you can ask which ewes have continuously been a low condition score through their life, and they’ve only had singles? Or, you look at the other side of it; who are our twiners every year that maintain good

RAISE THE BAA

45

condition, because they’re going to give us our best return from keeping them here.”

Rather than just drafting off the lightest ewes as they come down the race, a farmer is able to draft off the lower performing group based on several criteria sifted from the data history.

“For instance, those lighter ewes could have been born a twin but still got in lamb, and her lambs might be genotypically superior sheep but phenotype-wise, they’ve been raised off a ewe Will Gibson, geneticist at NeXtgen lamb and they will be more Agri and Otago farmer. likely to be smaller.”

Gibson has been working with the owners of Lindis Peaks Station at Tarras on a bloodline comparison.

Two new ram sources were introduced and data from the resulting progeny was analysed to pinpoint which one delivered more of the type of wool required to meet specific contracts the station has, as well as better ewe pregnancy rates and liveweight gains in sale lambs.

“And that’s where even just in that one year’s worth of data on those first crosses has shown an increase in scanning percentage, an increase in wool weights and an increase in live weight on those ewes in a mob where they’ve all been run together.”

“It showed their current genome type was definitely holding them back,” he says.

“But it also shows them that within a mob of 1200 ewes, there are good and poor individuals. With EID tagging, over the first year you can be getting rid of some of the rubbish and by year four you’ve really got the top end left in the flock to be breeding your replacements from.”

On the Gibson’s family farm, using collected data has allowed them to improve lamb survival over lambing in their multiple mobs.

Their flock is mated for two cycles. At scanning time, the scanner assigns a single, twin, triplet, or dry status to each ewe, and also assesses each ewe’s lambing period as early, mid and late.

The pregnancy status information allows the Gibsons to set the auto-drafter to create mobs of singles, twins and triplets for the remainder of the winter. When these mobs are back in the yards for their pre-lamb vaccinations, the lambing period data is loaded into the auto drafter to split them again to their early, mid and late groups for set stocking before lambing.

With limited easy country, it means the most vulnerable ewes get the easier country at the right time leading into lambing.

“So, our second and third, or mid and late singles gets put back out on the hill, because essentially we don’t need them eating the tucker on the flats at that stage.”

“Early multiples are set stocked on the best tucker, the mid multiples are on blocks that are going to come sort of two weeks after that, and the late twins are on our later country.

“This approach has really helped our bottom line through improved survival, better lamb growth rates and better weaning weights in our ewes. Instead of having mobs lambing over a six week period; you’ve only got ewes lambing over a two week period.

This leads to being able to streamline the tailing activity, and tail mobs earlier when they are all similarly aged.

46

RAISE THE BAA

MINDSET SHIFT

is all most farmers need to change to EID ELECTRONIC ID TAGS are a significant breakthrough for sheep farming, says genetics consultant Will Gibson.

“Farmers have animals at the yards more than they actually think they do, and a lot of those times when they’re there, they could be collecting something on them,” he says.

“Getting that mindset change is the hardest part. Then you just need a plan to know what you want from the data. What’s actually the reason you are collecting it and what’s the problem you’re trying to solve is the best way to look at it.”

He is a strong advocate of mandatory EID tagging of all sheep. “It is a cost if you’re not using them to achieve an outcome. It’s just putting a $2 bit of plastic in an ear which is an expensive way to colour code year groups,” he says.

Gibson has tried every EID tag option available on his own family’s property and says the key to retention is following the recommended tag insertion procedure correctly.

“In my situation at home, everything is disinfected and that’s a must for all farmers to ensure. The tags should pierce the ear properly, but if they haven’t, we make sure they do.”

Gibson mixes family farm activities with his full time role as a genetics consultant with neXtgen Agri, where he is primarily responsible for advising clients on how to get more value from data they are collecting. The family property is a commercial Merino operation which also runs two cattle studs and a Suffolk sheep stud.

“So, there’s certainly lots of data recording going on,” he says.

He is also a qualified wool classer. Aside from the home farm clip, Gibson also classes elsewhere including a 10-day annual stint classing for a large commercial flock at Tarras in Central Otago.

“All this is not unachievable without EID, but it takes a hell of a lot more work,” Gibson says.

“And, I reckon you could be looking at about a 10% improvement in survival in your twins because you’ve got less mob pressure and more feed on offer. That’s a win right away.”

After scanning, he creates a spreadsheet for each year group born that has weight history, condition score at the start of mating, and pregnancy status.

They also record whether each ewe was a wet-dry at tailing and its weight at weaning. Data is collected on which mob ewe lambs were born in, whether they were born as singles or multiples, and then a weaning weight.

MERINO WOOL

BY ROB TIPA

TECHNOLOGY

supports Lindis Peaks’ fine wool aims

L

INDIS PEAKS STATION is one of those iconic South Island high country properties whose reputation was built on growing fine Merino wool.

The property has been farmed by four generations of the Annan family since 1910 and has been a supplier of fine wool to the Icebreaker brand since it was established in 1995.

Today the farm is run by Simon Maling and Lucy Annan.

Merino wool remains the main focus of the business with the majority of its clip still contracted to Icebreaker.

Simon, a former Highlanders and All Blacks representative, says the farm is using new technology to explore new Merino genetics and drive breeding in the direction they want to go.

“The Merino industry has a range of sheep types, depending

ABOVE: Mixed-age ewes from the Lindis Peaks’ flock, all tagged with RapID tags from Allflex.

on the genetics you choose to focus on,” he says. “Management decisions on farm are supported by data collected from the EID tags.”

“It’s hard to gauge the performance of individual animals when you don’t have any history.”

Lindis Peaks started using Allflex RapID EID ear tags in its replacement ewes in 2016 and has continued that practice every year since.

With four years of records now available, this is the first year they are using these records to type-class all sheep as two-tooths

RAISE THE BAA

47

FARM DETAILS LINDIS PEAKS STATION, run by Simon Maling and Lucy Annan FARM SIZE: 3,500ha (comprising 2,000ha hill country, 500ha downs, 700ha dry land flats, 300ha irrigated flats) STOCK NUMBERS: 7000 Merino ewes, 7000-8000 hoggets,150 beef cows, 1000 trading cattle/dairy grazing AVERAGE ANNUAL RAINFALL: 450 - 550mm ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

LEFT: Lindis Peaks Station owner Simon Maling and Merino genetics consultant Will Gibson classing wool from the property’s fine wool clip in August.

pre-mating and this will assign them their mating mobs for life unless they are made a terminal.

Helping the Malings out with the genetic development of their Merino flock is Will Gibson, an award-winning Merino and Hereford stud breeder from Middlemarch.

A consultant for the genetics consultancy neXtgen Agri, he works throughout New Zealand and Australia.

In August he took annual leave from his consultancy work to help class the wool clip at Lindis Peaks. As Will explains, the aim is to get as much wool as possible into the top line of merino fleece wool the farm supplies to Icebreaker.

He says the focus is on young stock, because that is where the property is likely to get the biggest yields and quickest results.

When EID tagged sheep are run through the yards they are weighed and condition scored and that information is scanned and recorded.

“It’s all about monitoring at the start and nailing down what you’re actually wanting to change, so until you know, you can’t make informed decisions on that.”

“For a Merino we need to have them up

48

RAISE THE BAA

in condition so we want to know if there are ewes out there that are falling away in condition or not,” Will says.

Lindis Peaks is not yet using EID ear tags to record fleece weights because that would involve a lot of extra work, but Simon says that may be possible in future.

The property has introduced two new Merino bloodlines to the two original bloodlines it has traditionally used for fine wool production, using EBVs of stud rams to drive breeding in the direction they want to go. Will says EID tagging has confirmed the introduction of new bloodlines is already paying off.

“There’s a six kilogram difference between the top and bottom bloodlines in two-tooth ewes that are all running together, so that’s pretty straight-forward to see,” he says.

He believes genetics combined with good management will drive lamb survival in Merinos.

Fine-tuning lamb survival rates can have more of an impact on the bottom line of a property like Lindis Peaks than any other factor.

So fat and muscle alongside fleece weight has been a target when purchasing rams.

As breed improvements are made in lamb survival rates, the aim is to put more ewes to a terminal Merino sire and have greater selection of replacement ewes.

“So the data gives us more information for an informed decision at the drafting gate, to make sure the ewes are mated to the right type of ram or are culled for proper reasons.”

“There is also a lot of variation between sheep, so we really want to know exactly what’s out there as well. If we didn’t have EID tags in them, we wouldn’t know where they have come from easily and wouldn’t be able to compile the information quickly.”

Both Simon and Will say it is still early days but the results of EID tagging have given them a good gauge on their management decisions to date and the confidence that introducing new bloodlines was the right thing to do.

“The data backs up the important decisions we are making and shows that the decisions we are making are actually paying off,” Simon says.

Will says the technology is evolving all the time.

“Technology is moving so quickly that if you’re not jumping on board now, you’ll just get left behind.”

Absolute accuracy.

Unbeatable lamb to ewe paired parentage that’s sorted in seconds.

Allflex are the only New Zealand provider of EID tags paired with a tissue sampling unit (TSU) for both sheep and cattle.

Error free parentage testing that’s been proven and trusted in premium programmes for over 10 years. DNA sampling allows farmers to tag at docking/tailing rather than at birth to minimise disruption without sacrificing parentage accuracy.

RAISE THE BAA

49

GENETIC TRIALS

BY HEATHER CHALMERS

NO MORE GUESSWORK on breed transition

I

NFORMATION GENERATED FROM electronic identification ear tags is taking the guesswork out of a transition back to halfbred sheep for coastal North Canterbury sheep and beef farmers Ben and Jane Ensor.

The Ensors are trialling different genetic lines to determine which ones best suit their 1400ha hill country property, Jedburgh, which stretches from the outskirts of Cheviot to the coast.

Use of Allflex RapID EID tags means information can be easily recorded on every individual ewe’s performance, providing useful insights for their breeding decisions.

Jedburgh’s 5000 ewe flock is transitioning from Romney to halfbred/quarterbred.

Ben Ensor says it is a “back to the future” move, as his family had previously farmed quarterbreds, with his father Tim Ensor developing and selling rams known as Cormo in the 1980s and 90s.

“I enjoy that sort of sheep a lot more. Profitability is as good if not better than a Romney. You lose a bit in lambing percentage, but more than make up for that in the value of the wool.

“It is also a different animal in terms of handling and easier to muster.”

North Canterbury is also drought-prone, though Ensor believes all livestock need feeding in the dry, even fine-wool animals.

With virtually no flat land on the home farm, the Ensors also have a 120ha block of flat land for finishing, of which 90ha is irrigated, at Spotswood, bounding the Waiau River just north of Cheviot.

Ben says some Merino genetics are now available that are more focused on meat production, which in turn provides the ability to breed a much better halfbred or quarterbred than previously.

“Seeing those Merino genetics coming through was the deciding factor and knowing we could breed something better.”

“We still make more money out of meat, so need to maintain reproduction and constitution as much as we can, while producing a fine fleece of wool.”

The Ensors started using EID tags about six years ago when they first started using Farm IQ. For the first two years, free tags were supplied through a Primary Growth Partnership programme. “That was our first taste of EID.” Initially this was used on the finishing side of the business and it was interesting comparing different feeds, management and some different genetics, he says.

50

RAISE THE BAA

FARM DETAILS BEN AND JANE ENSOR, Jedburgh, Cheviot, North Canterbury.

1400HA hill country, plus 120ha of finishing flat land.

800MM average rainfall.

5000 breeding ewes, 1600 ewe hoggets.

300 Angus cows ALLFLEX TAG TYPE RapID tag

For the past three years, the EID tags have been put into ewe hoggets. As Jedburgh is trialling several different lines of genetics, the EID tags enable progeny to be easily compared for growth rates, scanning and reproductive performance, wool weight and type.

“It means you can do that quickly and easily.”

“Sheep need to be lambed in separate mobs, but once the lambs are EID tagged at tailing, everything recorded against that sheep is there for life and they can be put in any mob.”

“If we want to separate them we put them through an automatic drafter and that will read the tags and draft them whatever way we want. So, we can follow through the different genetics we used and see how they are performing under our management and on our farm and make decisions from there.”

“So that is the power of it – getting individual animal data quickly and easily. If it is not quick and easy you don’t do it.”

Farmers could do it in a conventional system, by putting another coloured tag in to show parentage. Then they would have to manually draft them into separate mobs before evaluating individual animals.

The Ensors are using four different lines of Merino and quarterbred genetics and starting to build a good picture of what works for them.

Advice on what Merinos to use and the breeding programme was provided by agricultural geneticist Mark Ferguson of NeXtgen Agri.

“Even once the genetic base is established, if we see some genetics we like, we can trial these without committing to using a lot of it.”

It was also easy to select an A mob, using criteria such as fertility or wool. All information is recorded on spreadsheets, as Ben finds it is simpler this way, rather than using software programmes which could be cumbersome.

The lifetime data of each individual animal is also available in the yards, in the scale head. “Everything is via Bluetooth, so we can download it all from the yards.”

Ben says that farmers using EID tags also really need to invest in hardware such as weigh scales, EID panel reader and automatic drafting.

“That gear is not essential, but it is a massive time saver.”

“For example, someone can bring in 2000 ewes and draft them up by themselves based on whatever criteria we want. In the past that would have been at least a two-man job.” Jedburgh has two full-time staff. As the farm already had an automatic drafter and scale head for its finishing operation, only a couple of add-ons were required to capture the data when the EID tags were introduced. An advantage, particularly for fine-wool sheep, is that at scanning ewes receive no raddle marks, with the information instead recorded against each animal’s EID tag. The information is provided in a data stick from the scanner. “That eliminates the risk of the raddle marks not coming out and staining the wool.”

The data was highlighting differences

ABOVE: Ben Ensor: Jedburgh’s southern boundary looks towards Gore Bay, a popular holiday and recreational beach settlement near Cheviot. between the genetic lines, with two-tooths in the highest scanning genetic group recording 167%, while the lowest scanned 134%.

“These were sheep run in the same mob and in the same conditions, so that is just genetic difference. It is not always that extreme, but it is helping us make the right decisions while transitioning to a halfbred flock.

“If we follow through with the line that scans 167% rather than 134% that will produce a huge financial difference.”

The Ensors have three age groups of ewes tagged and expect to have the entire ewe flock tagged in two years. As the main benefit was evaluating genetic gain in the younger sheep there was not a big financial advantage in tagging the older ewes.

They will also keep doing samples of finishing lambs, which go to their Spotswood block.

“There is not a big return in doing the whole lot, but if we do 10 to 15% of lambs, this gives us a record of daily weight gains, which helps us to pick up if something is not right.”

“It can also help us compare genetics.”

About 25-30% of ewes are in a B flock, mated to a South Suffolk terminal sire.

In the cattle, all the yearling heifers and steers are weighed, with drenching based on weight gain. “By weighing monthly, you build up

a record in your scales and if they are not doing the desired weight gain, they get a drench. If they are doing well and putting on weight they are not drenched.”

The same approach was also trialled with the lambs last year. EID tags were put into about 700 non-replacement lambs, which were weighed every fortnight, only drenching those animals that were not meeting expectations for weight gains.

Two-thirds of the lambs never got a drench in a relatively intensive finishing operation, compared with the normal practice of drenching every four weeks.

While this is more sustainable in terms of reducing the risk of parasite resistance to drenches, it was financially marginal because of the extra labour required, Ben says.

Lambs are finished on a specialist clover feed of predominantly red clover, with some white.

Over the last five years this had proven to be a reliable performer, with lambs at a stocking rate of 50 a hectare growing 220 grams/day.

The move to finer wool meant the average kill date would be pushed back two to three weeks, with 90% of lambs killed in autumn.

“While lamb growth rates are slower, you are also getting 2kg of 22 to 23 micron wool and that more than makes up for it,” Ben says.

RAISE THE BAA

51

FUTURE PROOFING

BY HEATHER CHALMERS

TAG COST NO BARRIER FOR future-proofing farm

52

RAISE THE BAA

C

ENTRAL CANTERBURY HILL country sheep and beef farmers Sam and Cathie Bell say they started EID tagging their sheep flock last spring with a view to future proofing their farming operation.

With ewes tagged as lambs, it will take about seven years before all age groups are EID tagged.

“Price-wise, we believe that the additional cost of an Allflex EID tag, compared with a normal ear tag, relative to the value of a breeding ewe, is insignificant,” Sam says.

“We are future-proofing. We are not expecting anything major out of the EID tags yet, but we do want to be able to auto-draft.”

Their 1100 hectare property Benlea, at Windwhistle on the north bank of the Rakaia River, runs a breeding and finishing operation farming Romney ewes lambing at 155 per cent.

While Benlea used to farm a herd of Angus cattle, it now runs Friesian and Friesian-cross bulls, turning over 400 a year.

Bought at between 300 to 400kg, these are sold at 600kg.

The Bells said that being able to auto-draft would make it easier to manage their A and B sheep flocks. Their A flock was put to a Romney ram and the B flock to a terminal Suftex ram.

“We want to be able to put those A and B ewes together after weaning and run them as a mob and be able to auto-draft them back out again. This is our only expectation from EID at the moment.”

While two years of young sheep were Allflex EID tagged last spring, from now on it would be each year’s ewe lamb replacements.

The Bells believe that eventually all sheep will be required to have EID tags, something which was already compulsory for some sheep in Australia, which had a much bigger national flock than New Zealand.

Technology gains would also continue to be made, in terms of gathering and utilising data.

The Bells had auto-drafted for weight for 20 years, but needed to invest in an EID panel reader to have the ability to draft on tags.

FARM DETAILS SAM AND CATHIE BELL, Benlea, Windwhistle, Central Canterbury 1100HA HILL COUNTRY, from flat to rolling to steep hill 1150MM average rainfall.

480M to 900m asl

4800 Romney ewes, 1200 ewe hoggets FINISHING: 400 Friesian and Friesiancross bulls a year.

ALLFLEX TAG TYPE: RapID tag

They would also be checking the durability of tags and their retention rate.

They were also looking for a quicker tagging system than the one they had, and EID offered a quicker tagging system than the one they had, with the EID tags coming in a continuous strip, rather than having to reload for each individual animal.

In terms of their Romney flock, the returns are all coming from lamb at the moment, with the breed’s strong wool only a cost. Lambs are weaned pre-Christmas, with some drafted straight off mum, and most lambs gone by June, with the Bells aiming for an average 20kg cw.

The Bells are getting good results from adding greater diversity into their feed crops, using a base of rape or ryecorn and adding a mix of grasses, legumes and annuals.

In a snow and rain belt, Benlea could be hit with one metre of snow, although this hadn’t occurred for five years.

At Benlea, Cathie and daughter Katie also host garden and farm tours, as well as renting out a cottage to travellers and skiers. Travellers from 20 different countries visited the property last year. Visitors enjoy having an authentic farming experience, Cathie says.

LEFT: Sam and Cathie Bell of Benlea, Windwhistle. BELOW: These two-tooth Romney ewes were tagged with red EID ear tags last spring. Two-tooths were wintered on a diversified feed of radish, mustard seed, ryecorn and oats, with a rape base.

RAISE THE BAA

53

Allflex Livestock Intelligence lead the world in animal identification, monitoring and smart data solutions.

Critical to improving the health and wellbeing of people and animals, Allflex solutions together with the wider MSD Animal Health portfolio, ensures an 54

RAISE THE BAA

even greater transparency in our food supply.

Trust starts here.

500 million animals per year tagged, traced and monitored takes commitment. We’re calling this our starting point.

RAISE THE BAA

55

www.allflex.global/nz | custserv@allflex.co.nz

Allflex Livestock Intelligence, part of MSD Animal Health Intelligence, is the world leader in the design, development, manufacturing and delivery of solutions for animal identification, monitoring and traceability. Our solutions empower farmers to act in a timely manner, to safeguard their animals’ health, while achieving optimal production outcomes for a healthy food supply.

Through its commitment to the Science of Healthier AnimalsÂŽ, MSD Animal Health offers veterinarians, farmers, pet owners and governments one of the widest ranges of veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines and health management solutions and services. MSD Animal Health is dedicated to preserving and improving the health, well-being and performance of animals and the people who care for them.