Voluntary tag use makes dollar sense

An ABARES regulatory impact study released late last month found less than five per cent of the 107 submissions supported the replacement of the current mob-based NLIS system with mandatory electronic tagging.

But stud - and even commercial - producers are witnessing the cost effectiveness of RFID technology for on-farm decision making.

They are voluntarily using the tags to identify the best and worst performers within their flocks for key economic traits, and collecting vast amounts of data accurately.

Gum Hill Poll Merino stud, Mount Bryan, was one of the early adopters of e-tags a decade ago.

Stud co-principal Justin Lines said they recognised the potential for taking the human errors out of their comprehensive performance recording, and began tagging all their young rams.

"We were handling the sheep four times, and trying to read the plastic tags as they were being shorn and record their IDs."

Mr Lines said it did not matter what they did, they could not better a 3pc error rate in tag matching.

"Every year we had 35 to 40 rams without details; the first year we went electronic, we had just two.

"One-quarter of those rams we keep so the economic benefit to us as a seedstock producer was immediate."

In the early years, the cost of the tags meant they were removed when the young rams were sold and the tags reused.

Since last year, Gum Hill has permanently tagged every lamb on the property despite the Shearwell tags costing $1.50 each.

* Full report in Stock Journal, April 3, 2014 issue.