Beef farmers can reap benefits of EID technology
When it comes to electronic identification of livestock, it is the sheep industry that has so far grabbed the attention.
But according to Oxfordshire farmer Neil Rowe, beef producers should be the ones making headlines thanks to the technology.
Mr Rowe, who runs a Stabiliser herd of 150 cows at Manor Farm, Abingdon, has been using EID on his beef cattle for the past six years.
And he is so sure of the benefits of the technology across the beef supply chain that he says the UK industry risks being left behind the rest of the world unless it adopts EID as standard.
“Using EID across all of our beef cattle comes from our background of robotic milking,” says Mr Rowe, who was a finalist in the Farmers Weekly 2012 Beef Farmer of the Year award.
“Until 2007, we had a robotic dairy system where everything from milking to feeding, grazing and separating the cattle was controlled by an electronic ear tag.”
Managing a beef operation alongside the dairy, he says it made sense for him to run his 100 autumn and 50 spring calvers on an electronic system, too.
Effective management
Each of the cattle is tagged with a high-vis and an identification tag, which are read using a handheld reader. Then information recorded is used to help manage stock in a simpler and more effective way.
“We have the facilities to do different things, so if we want to split steers from heifers, separate different weights or identify specific animals and draft them into separate pens then we can,” he says.
The system also allows him to measure the performance of cattle in terms of gross weights and has made his whole system so much simpler that he needs one less member of staff when handling stock.
That saving alone is one that should make investing in EID appealing to producers, but there are other benefits of the system over traditional tags, he says.
“With traditional tags they can often get dirty or you have to get closer to animals than you would perhaps like to be to be able to read it.
“You also have to enter information about the cattle by hand, which is annoying,” he says.
“With the EID system you just download the data. If you are a one-man band or a small family farm it could be quite an attractive way to operate, while larger units can use it to become more technical in calculating feed efficiencies more easily.”
But focusing on what EID can do on a farm level is something UK beef producers must get past in favour of thinking about how the technology can help the wider industry, Mr Rowe says.
He believes without adoption across the supply chain – from farmers to abattoirs and buyers – the UK beef industry risks being left with inadequate technology that does not enable producers to compete against international producers in terms of quality or profitability.
“We need to use it to connect the entire chain and that’s where it falls down at the moment,” he says.
“From when the calf is born to when it goes to the consumer, the system should be joined-up so that when I send an animal to slaughter I don’t just know its weight when it reaches the retailer, I know everything about it.
“That way when a consumer gets a bad piece of beef, we can go back to where it came from.”
Access to records
Third-party access to records should also be enabled to allow vets and nutritionists to get a better handle on herd health and productivity and work more effectively with farmers.
“Only then we can start to make progress,” Mr Rowe says.
“Rearing youngstock and finishing beef cattle are cinderella industries in the UK; they very often happen by accident without any real monitoring of nutrition, grazing or genetics. That lack of knowledge transfer has to change through the help of EID.”
Mr Rowe says he is campaigning for more information to be used at slaughterhouses because data currently being collected by beef producers who do use EID is being lost.
“It’s chicken and egg. The abattoir won’t invest in EID readers until more farmers have the technology, but farmers won’t invest until they know abattoirs will make use of it.”
Another stumbling block in the sector adopting EID is the software available, he adds.
Research and development
“The software we are using at the moment is not very good. Research and development in the technology has been steered from cattle to sheep, leaving the beef sector going nowhere.
“Most of the software is not really fit for purpose and has been adapted from sheep programmes that haven’t really been thought through for cattle.”
Frustrated with the lack of development in beef EID, Mr Rowe has started working with two software developers to come up with a bespoke beef recording system.
The software, which is currently in trial version and will hopefully be available to farmers by the middle of 2013, involves producers logging on to a website that links to BCMS.
They can then update information on nutrition, feed efficiency and other data of cattle and for a small fee offer access to vets and buyers.
“Until we get the right software, the industry is stuck in first gear,” Mr Rowe says.
Having greater understanding and information about cattle should help suppliers secure more straightforward pricing contracts, he adds. “Retaining some kind of commitment throughout the supply chain is the way the industry will have to go and it can’t do that without EID.”
In the meantime, Mr Rowe says he believes EID should be made compulsory, or it will take a generation for the industry to get to where it should be with the technology.
The costs
While some hi-tech EID systems are costly, a basic system costing about £5,500 would enable most farmers to make considerable progress in their production operations, says Mr Rowe.
“If you finished 2,000 cattle you can spend £10,000 on a hi-tech crush, but you don’t need to spend that much to reap the benefits.”
EID tags cost about £2.50, while standard tags cost about £1 less. Mr Rowe’s hand-held reader cost £400, while the race-mounted reader was £700 and the set of scales was £1,500. An autodraft gate cost about £2,800.
“That basic kit would allow you to make so much progress. Once EID is set up you can automate other systems such as grazing and bulling detection. It’s amazing what you can automate, but it all requires an EID tag.”
“If you finish 2,000 cattle you can spend £10,000 on a hi-tech crush, but you don’t need to spend that much to reap the benefits.”
EID tags cost about £2.50, while standard tags cost about £1 less. Mr Rowe’s handheld reader cost £400, while the race-mounted reader was £700 and the set of scales was £1,500. An autodraft gate cost about £2,800.
“That basic kit would allow you to make so much progress. Once EID is set up you can automate other systems such as grazing and bulling detection. It’s amazing what you can automate, but it all requires an EID tag.”
Read more about Neil Rowe’s suckler system
Find out how Neil Rowe’s handling system is set up to work with a cow’s natural behaviour