Just think the more data I can collect then the better informed decisions I can make and
help with the genetic gain of my sheep flock.
I'm Wayne Pech and I farm at North Stirling Downs which is 40 kilometres south of Gnowangerup
in the Great Southern of WA.
We farm 13 and a half thousand hectares and of that we put in about half the country to
mixed crop and the other half of the country to Merino sheep for wool and for meat and
that ranges from 25 to 35 thousand sheep depending on the time of year.
We initially got into a Gallagher three way auto drafter just to weigh lambs ready for
market so we could weigh them ourselves and send them off ourselves without having to
use an agent and save on commission.
And from that we've now done three years of tagging sheep with their own EID tag and we've
purchased a Gallagher HR5 stick reader and a Gallagher TSI to weigh and record body weights,
muscle data and wool data.
So the ewe will run up this race here and I'll scan it with my HR5 stick reader, Gallagher
stick reader, then I'll open the gate and then this is just a normal scales.
It will capture the weight, the stick reader is blue toothed to this smart TSI screen.
That is where we'll store the individual body weights and then I'll just chuck it on a USB,
go back to the office and mail it off to my consultant.
It creates a few extra man hours.
But what it's giving me is a lot more information, so now I put all of that data together and
I'm using that as well as visually selecting the best sheep and get rid of the non-performers,
either into a lower base flock or sell them all together.
[The sheep whether it's a dry season or a good season you still get an income each year.
So it smooths out the peaks and troughs.
When you do the analysis, when you do the economic analysis on this, on the electronic
ID using Wayne’s farming system, his initial cost is twenty seven thousand five hundred
and he will have some ongoing costs for his data analysis.
Then the net present value is 163 thousand dollars for the 10 year project.
This equates to a benefit cost ratio of ten point six which means for every dollar that
he's invested he's getting a return of ten point six.
It'll take him five years to pay back his initial investment.
EID and data collection means the more you can transfer electronically the less the less
chance there is for mistakes.
And probably the more likely you are to collect that data.
It's not even about us trying to run more sheep, it's making the sheep that we are running
more efficient.
If you do them the right way they’re not hard work.
And there's also more and more people out there who are interested in that, they enjoy
doing that more than sitting in a tractor 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Technology is improving and prices are coming down all the time, so I'll keep working on
improving the top end and tidying up the bottom end and lifting the average of our whole flock.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development through its Sheep Industry Business
Innovation project made possible by Royalties for Regions is supporting and sharing new
technologies in the sheep industry.
This is improving labour efficiency in the sector and making it easier all round to run
sheep.