MOTHERING up ewes and lambs can be a laborious task, but new tech company SmartShepherd is making it far easier for producers to collect full pedigrees.
The system, which also works on cattle and goats, can match a ewe to its offspring within 48 hours.
Re-usable collars containing small radio transmitters are placed on each ewe and lamb in a mob to track the movement of animals and their interaction with other animals in the paddock.
The data collected enables the system to match the ewe to its progeny.
SmartShepherd, which was commercially launched late last year, is the brainchild of livestock industry veteran David Rubie –who spent 12 years working for Sheep Genetics Australia – and technology expert Glen Vassallo.
Mr Rubie says they recognised an opportunity to help producers collect maternal data and find those ewes with the most profitable progeny.
“Traditional mothering up is hard work,” he said.
“And while the Sheep CRC’s Pedigree Matchmaker works well using a gate that the sheep run through in single file, sometimes when there is wet weather there can be complete failures.”
Their answer, which is achieving a 95 per cent-plus success rate, is polypropylene collars with a pod containing a radio transmitter, powered by a coin cell battery.
No cellular coverage is required in the paddock to collect the data.
The data is uploaded to SmartShepherd, which then produces pedigree reports for its clients.
The sheep are handled twice in the process, once to put the collars on and again to remove them.
“Most are waiting until their lambing is finished and then working it in with marking,” he said.
Mr Rubie says it is proving far more cost-effective than genomic testing, equating to about $10 for each pedigree collected.
“Each time it gets a different individual animal ID using the reader, so the collars can be used multiple times over multiple years,” he said.
Mr Rubie says the early adopters have mainly been stud breeders, but he sees great potential for commercial flocks to measure ewe productivity, including the kilograms of lamb each ewe turns off.
“The real engine room of productivity for people is their ewes,” he said.
“Every year they are using sire information to make breeding decisions but half of the genetics are being ignored because they don’t have the information on the ewe.
“If you can collect mothering information, that will influence the lambing percentages of their daughters in the flock and so on.”
Mr Rubie has been pleased with the uptake of SmartShepherd in its first nine months, with customers in SA, NSW, Vic and WA.
There has also been strong interest from New Zealand, South Africa and the Falkland Islands.
- Details: smartshepherd.com.au
