The Sheep E.I.D. SOLUTION with FarmIT 3000

A full description of just how the readers works with FarmIT 3000 is available.

EID Book - 3.53MG

Handheld compatibility with your farm management software

FarmIT3000 is available together with a choice of EID readers for a practical, cost effective EID solution. They will both hold several thousand entries (depending on the tasks being recorded).  For those wishing to collect advanced data and review the data in the field we are pleased to prove the Psion Workabout pro running farmIT mobile.

This EID solution provides instant and easy animal identification and information recording. The readers are simple, robust and easy to use in the field avoiding manual input of data into FarmIT3000 to produce useful management information.

Although EID has had rather exceptional bad press, if you want to record information in the field about large numbers of sheep, EID tags and an EID reader can save you an enormous amount of time and improve the accurancy of the data collected, whether lambing, moving, grouping, weighing or treating animals, if you need to, or simply want to, record it EID can help considerably.

"Some people may insist that unless you use a sophisticated race reading systems you will not benifit from EID. However there are many times when you need to read the EID of the animal outside of the race, for example at lambing time, or when away from your main holding. For this reason it is likely that even if you had a race reading system you would still need a hand held reader. The GES II Reader is simple to use, rugged, but most of all very reliable."

With FarmIT 3000 providing the analysis tools, it is now possible to record performance on a very large scale (1500 - 1800 animals), this linked to the ease of use of the readers and the ability for us to literally customise data collection to your requirements means that you can now have the management information you need.

The following testimonials are provided by customers who are actually using FarmIT 3000 and EID Readers to aid in the management of their sheep flocks. They are ALL commercial breeders. 

KEEPING SHEEP RECORDS WITH EID - Peter Vassie

Peter runs a flock of 200 breeding ewes and records all aspects of ewe performance. He is also very keen on EID and find the GES II reader a very good tool.

EID ON A LARGE SCALE (2000 sheep) - Nigel Elgar

Nigel Elgar has been using FarmIT 3000 for over three years and has contributed to its development. He uses all aspects of the program to manage a 600 hectare mid-wales hill farm, with over 100 beef cattle and over 1000 breeding ewes. He is also one of a small group of farmers who have been using EID for over 5 years and has extensive experience. Nigel's sheep enterprise is a commercial unit, but he records all aspects of the production from lambing through to weighing and grading of carcusses. Lambs are double tagged at birth and recorded into the system. At the height of the year over 2500 EID tagged animals are on the holding each fully identified with a fully individual record covering breeding, treatments, feeding, movements and weighing. 

FLOCK IMPROVEMENT USING FARMIT 3000 AND EID - Tim and Adeline Jones

Tim and Adeline manage a 500 ewe commercial flock near Tenbury Wells. They are a commercial unit and have been manually recording information for many years. Introduced to FarmIT 3000 and the GES II reader back in June 2005 they have been totally converted to using EID.

EID at lambing time
	Step 1: Catch your ewe and lamb. A dog and a long crook are very helpful - the inexperienced helpers possibly less so! Identify the ewe using your hand held reader by reading her eartag or bolus.
	Some of our farmers do not catch the ewe, but manually read a management tag (large flag tag) from a distance. Ewes with good mothering instinct may of course be very close. Some farmers even pre write the ewe with a management number on her side or fit temporary numbers on collars.
	Step 2: Tag the lamb with 2 tags with identical numbers. One will have the EID chip the other is plain. Enter the details of the lamb into the reader - its eartag number (read with the reader), sex, breed etc. You will have to do this for each lamb belonging to this ewe. Obviously all this is much easier if you lamb inside! Step 3: Take the reader to the office at the end of the day and download all the records. It will update the ewes record with details of the lambing and will create new records for each of the lambs. This does not have to be done on a sunny day as the readers are fairly watertight and will withstand most conditions. Even if you drop it in a bucket of water it will work again if given a bit of attention and it will not loose its data!
	Here Martin is using handheld electronic scales to weigh the lambs as soon as they are tagged. Again the details are recorded using a GESII EID reader. The eartag of the lamb is read and then the weight is entered. These scales weigh up to 10kg to a resolution of 0.01kg. As part of the schemes Nigel is involved with, he will weigh all the lambs again at 8 and 12 weeks (this time using his usual weigh crate and typing the weights into the reader) which will help to give a fuller picture of the development of lambs from an early age.

EID Information Booklet - 3.53MG
This book contains walkthroughs for many different EID tasks.
It is a PDF file and requires you to have Acrobat Reader.