Sheep health and production

So my name is Stacey Lugsdin.

My husband Ian and I, our son Tom and our five daughters all run a self-replacing Merino enterprise here at Warrendale, which is located 45 kilometres North East of Hay. We're currently running about 3,500 breeding ewes.

We're preg scanning here today at the moment and one of the decisions that we will make after we finish preg scanning is which sheep to keep and which sheep to sell. Because of the dry conditions we need to reduce our numbers, but we will keep the most productive sheep.

eID was something new back in 2014 when I had the idea to record animal data. Started off very basic, so we had just, we had using two tags, one was our NLIS tag and the other one was electronic tag, and we started off with one wand that had a little keypad on it, and all the data that we used, all the data that we recorded was put into Excel spreadsheets and sorted that way, which was quite tedious, but still it was allowing us to actually start looking at our animals on an individual basis instead of as a mob.

Being a semi-arid climate we had to make sure that we only retain productive sheep. So it was to reduce our numbers but to keep our productivity up.

So over the years we started with three basic breeding objectives which was wool, clean fleece weight, and eye muscle and fat which are carcass traits, and normally wool and carcass traits are antagonistic towards each other, so they're negatively correlated. So what we decided was to try and push the boundaries with all three.

And in 2016 we did a flock profile as part of the Sheep CRC pilot programme. And then we've continued to do a flock profile every two years to benchmark any genetic gains that we have actually made.

Our aim was to actually start breeding a sheep that had flat skin and really good wool cut and staple length, and so at lamb marking we are now completely non-mulesed. It has taken us probably nine years to get to that point, but we are completely non-mulesed from the animal ethics point of view.

As far as equipment goes, you don't have to buy everything to start with, we just started with one wand. We slowly progressed to a database where all the animals could go in, and when we bought a Tru-Test XR5000, which records all the data, and then we bought an automatic drafting machine as well, which makes it a lot easier when we come to draft.

The key benefits that we've found from implementing eID is an increase in production. Profit drivers are lambs on the ground, and what we've found since we've started introducing carcass traits is that we have better lambing rates. Generally you're well over 100 percent of lambs, and for us to be able to sell that wether lamb and get it off quicker and then sell the ewes that don't meet our breeding standards, it gives us more disposable income.

So since we've been using eID, we've had dramatic genetic gains in carcass traits and wool traits.

New producers taking on eID, it's mandatory anyway from last January for all those sheep that were born on the properties last year. For the new producers that are trying to work at how they can use the data that's now available to them, I would work with producers in their area that are already using eID as part of their management system and then adopt it to their system.