Electronic tagging

• Development and adoption of a system of electronic tagging of animals combined with computerised data capture.

• Improvements in the accuracy of animal identification.
• Streamlining of data handling processes.
• Improvements in the ease of capturing performance data.

• Identification of animals on farms is a major difficulty in relation to farm recording. This reflects the need to muster animals and pass them through a handling system, where difficulties in reading ear tags occur through dirt on the tag, the animal refusing to hold its head still, the ear tag having been damaged, lost ear tags and poor insertion of the tag.
• The electronic tag has a loss rate of less than one percent because it is inserted in the centre of the ear. Reading the tag is achieved electronically using a hand held device which eliminates the problems described above.
• The risk of injury to personnel reading tags should be reduced.
• The capture of animal performance data is much more difficult on beef farms, due to the lower frequency with which animals are handled, when compared to dairy farms. A regular supply of breeding and liveweight gain information is required to facilitate effective management of beef cattle enterprises.

• A system of electronic tagging for use in the identification and recording of farm animals.
• A system of automatically recording beef cattle liveweights whenever the animals are being passed through a handling system.

• Electronic tagging of animals and recording of data on a hand-held computer.
• Downloading of data from the hand-held computer onto a central computer network for data processing and report preparation.

• Labour savings and increases in accuracy in relation to the identification of animals and the recording of performance and other data.
• Reduction in the risk of injury to staff.
• Commercial uptake of electronic data capture systems linked to business systems.
• The ease of recording information accurately into a database capable of producing simple reports pertinent to the farm business will improve decision making. This will lead to more effective management and improved competitiveness and profitability of the farm business.