ELECTRONIC ear tags for sheep can be justified as long as they are part of an overall management strategy.

That's how Ararat wool and lamb producer and Mike Stephens and Associates consultant, Charlie de Fegely, describes his experience with putting electronic tags in all of his breeding ewes and some of his prime lambs.

    AT A GLANCE
  • Who: Charlie de Fegely
  • What: wool and prime lambs
  • Why: tagging the winners
  • Where: Ararat
  • Report: JOHN PARRY

Charlie runs a dual-purpose Merino flock producing 19-micron wool, prime lambs and some cereal cropping.

He said electronic identification helped collect individual sheep measurements for selecting ewes into the main breeding flock. It also improved feedback on management decisions.

Traditionally in the sheep industry, data has been collected and used on a mob-by-mob basis.

"A key factor that influenced our decision to adopt electronic tags was an understanding of flock dynamics and the cumulative benefits from selecting the best-performing sheep," Charlie said.

"We felt that the tags would provide us with the best means of accurately recording and retrieving the data we need to make informed management decisions."

The de Fegely property has been one of eight involved in an electronic sheep identification program in commercial flocks for the Victorian Department of Primary Industries.

Tags have been used in the Merinos to collect individual sheep measurements at shearing and some of the prime lambs have been tagged to provide genetic information and carcass performance.

Charlie said the objective for the Merino flock was 18.5-19-micron wool with a lambing percentage of 120 per cent.

"We aim to wean the lambs at an average weight of 35kg at 100 days.

"We then target to sell all the lambs with a carcass weight of 22-24kg."

Selection in the Merino flock is now based on wool, fertility and carcass characteristics.

"Out target is to lower our average micron by 0.1 micron, increase our lambing percentage by 15 per cent and increase lamb growth rates by 50gm per head per day."

The flock is based on Bundilla Merino bloodlines from Young in NSW and lambing rates have ranged from 95 to 110 per cent over the past five years.

"We plan to continue fleece measuring the younger ewes," Charlie said.

"By selecting the best 60 per cent of ewes to go into the wool flock we increase the average returns by around $3.50 a ewe.

"As 50 per cent of our returns come from meat, we also make selections on body weight and pregnancy status."

A draft of lambs was recently processed at an abattoir with electronic readers and the individual carcass weights showed that one sire group earned an extra $6.80 a lamb, due to an increase in yield.

Tags fitted to some of the lambs finished on grain have been used to measure growth rates.

"We have found lambs that performed poorly, improved when a draft was sold and the dynamics (feeding) changed.

"It is nice to have these weights but it is hard to justify the expense for all of the prime lambs."

Charlie said one of the advantages of having all the ewes ranked was that the poorest-performing sheep could be identified and culled if sheep numbers had to be reduced.

In the past some of the best-performing sheep might have been sold when an age group was sold.

He said the tags were a more efficient means of taking measurements.

They required less stock handling, reduced errors and allowed information to be retrieved for later decisions on selection.

The tags cost $1 each in Victoria and were best applied at weaning (12-14 weeks).

Charlie said he would prefer a single-piece tag that could be fitted at marking, similar to the existing multi-tag.

"The current button-type electronic bottom tag is not easily visible in woolly sheep and can make manual drafting difficult," he said.

The reading equipment varied in price from $6000 to $25,000.

The value of equipment required varied with the number of stock and the number of measurements to be taken, but costs could be reduced by sharing equipment.

Charlie built a lamb feedlot in 2006 and at the same time bought a second-hand auto-drafter so the lambs could be weighed quickly.

"We can now weigh around 500 lambs an hour," he said.

"Electronic tags allow us to measure their growth rate from the previous weighing automatically while weighing and drafting.

"Last year we weighed the equivalent of 15,000 lambs and found the auto-drafter made the job much easier and justified the acquisition. We would not contemplate weighing this number manually."

Charlie said the key to justifying the cost of electronic tagging was the cumulative effect of the many small gains that could be made.

"It is very hard to put a value on feedback and information that improves management decisions," he said. "The ability to rank our breeding ewes according to their level of production will ensure we run only the most profitable sheep.

"However, there are areas were the ear tags cannot be substituted for best-practice management."