New electronic eartags are being put under a fierce test in a century-old woolshed in western Victoria.
4000 stud sheep at Nareeb Narreb, Glenthompson have been tagged with the new National Livestock Identification Scheme (NLIS) electronic tags.
The tags are now commercially available from the Victorian DPI for $1.35 and the Beggs have also benefited from the state governments assistance in implementing the technology into a computer database, an offer that extends to June 30 this year.
Robert Wyld of Sapien Technology has set up the system that scans the electronic tags and captures the data in the shearing shed.
Richard’s brother David has developed a program that will store and analyse their data.
Accuracy of data collection, reducing costly human error and the convenience of holding the information electronically are the reasons for the move.
"The speed, efficiency and ease with which this system can record information makes performance recording not the hassle it used to be," he added.
In the past, performance recording at shearing involved the manual reading of tags and human error could take place at three distinct points, quite understandable given the bee hive of the shearing board and wool tables.
With a hand held scanner, human error has been removed from the reading of tags and the records against that tag are also virtually error free.