Effective Rangeland EID Decision Making Systems

Summary

The Producers Demonstration Site Project ‘Effective Rangeland eID Decision Making Systems’ ran from 2021 until 2022 showed the potential of utilising individual animal management systems through electronic identification tools to improve the effectiveness of decision‐making in the rangeland regions of Australia.

The project was instigated prior to eID becoming compulsory in the regions concerned. It was predominantly related to utilising eID to optimise management decision‐making rather than traceability throughout the supply chain. Key to the project was how decision‐making can be enhanced with the utilisation of eID rather than simply the methodology to utilise the capture of that data.

Individual animal management has been slow to emerge in the rangeland regions. This is due to several factors, such as labour, seasonality in conditions and the sheer scale of operations. For these reasons, any eID framework utilised in the rangelands should be well leveraged upon these key factors.

Objectives

By 2024 in the Western Rangeland Region of New South Wales:

1. Demonstration trials across three sites in the Western Division including Hillston, White Cliffs and Wentworth will aim to increase the adoption of individual animal management in rangeland sheep enterprises utilizing EID technology for evidence-based management decisions. This will increase to at least four sites by the second year of the project as targeted extension generates more interest from observer producers to be involved.

2. Achieve a quantifiable net benefit in core producers’ profitability of their individual sheep operation, verified by their development and completion of a personal individual animal management decision making framework. Benefit Cost Analysis will be produced to help demonstrate return on investment of EID versus improvements in production metrics.

3. At the completion of 2024 individual demonstration site producers exhibit a verifiable increase in 10% over the long-term average lambing marking rate identified by each producer in their initial survey. The current lamb marking averages will be recorded to benchmark the project against.

4. 100% of core producers and 90% of observer producers will have improved their knowledge around the utilisation of individual animal management systems in a rangeland sheep production system, in particular in areas such as understanding individual animal health and nutritional requirements, genetic selection and grazing management tailored to the individual.

5. 100% of core producers and 90% of observer producers will have improved their skills by actively participating hands on in the project and actively identify and report skill gaps that the project may be able to address. These skills are key around using technology hardware in the appropriate context, the appropriate software to collate data and the techniques to implement the correct management decision.

6. 85% of core producers and 50% of observer producers will have adopted (or intend to adopt) the utilisation of individual animal management systems in a rangeland sheep production system in particular in areas such as understanding individual animal health and nutritional requirements, genetic selection and grazing management tailored to the individual.

7. Results of the PDS will be widely disseminated with targeted extension and adoption activities such as field days around demonstration sites demonstrating the decision making surrounding such systems as well as other field days, industry publications and social media as outlined in the communications section of this application.

Key findings

Key outcomes

• eID may be used as a cost‐effective tool that can potentially increase productivity in a rangeland grazing system.
• Fertility traits are a key profit driver that eID will help to enhance in a cost‐effective manner. 
• It may take some time to utilise the data involved in eID for decision‐making, with, for example, multiple joinings required to build an accurate narrative.
• Given that some areas have labour challenges, autodrafting technology may help improve livestock handling efficiency. 

Things to consider

• Is your current flock at a level where it can benefit from eID?
• What relationships can you leverage to improve the ease of your eID program?
• Decision‐making must occur in the context of your enterprise’s ability to manage changes. 
• In some instances, producers will need to accept some minor imperfections in data. This shouldn’t be seen as disheartening, but attempts should be made to minimise these errors or misreads.