FarmIT 3000 - EID Electronic Identification

Solutions for sheep, cattle, pigs and deer. What ever your data recording needs we have solutions to help.

Agrident APR350 outside lambing

Agrident hand held readers have been a very reliable, robust solution for reading and recording sheep with EID tags.

FarmIT3000 is available together with a choice of EID readers for a practical, cost effective EID solution to fit your recording needs, from stick readers to mobile computers or static readers intergated with weighing. We have a flexible system which may be tailored to your needs or grow with your business.

The FarmIT 3000 software provides the farm record keeping and has specific routines to exchange data with the supported EID readers. Together it is possible to performance record on a large scale and get the benifits of electronic identification.

EID provides instant and easy animal identification and information recording. EID readers are simple, robust and easy to use in the field, with data import into FarmIT3000 to produce useful management information in seconds.

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 accuracy of the data collected., Whether lambing, moving, grouping, weighing or treating animals if you need to, or simply want to, recording with EID can help considerably.

Types of EID Reader

EID (RFID) readers come in various forms from very basic ones which only read and display the number, to data loggers and mobile computers.

Hand Held Readers verses Static Readers

Some people may insist that unless you use a sophisticated race reading systems you will not benefit from EID. However there are many times when you need to read the EID of an 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.

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

We have been working on farms with Sheep and EID since 2003 and 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!

EID ON A LARGE SCALE (2000 sheep)- Duncan Nelless

Duncan has been recording his commercial and pedigree flocks with FarmIT 3000 since 2007 for performance recording both on farm and with SIGNET. Utilising EID he has full breeding records for every animal on the farm and tags at birth. EID has enabled a level of performance previously only achieved by small pedigree breeders

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 APR350 reader back in June 2005 they have been totally converted to using EID.

EID at lambing time

Indoor or out EID can help, though outdoor you need ewes with very good maternal instinct.

Indoor Lambing With A PSion WAP

Indoor Lambing With An Agridicent APR500

Recording lambing indoors does not have the challenges of outside. Reading Ewe and Lamb tags is easy, recording the lambings event straight forward and even weighing lambs an easy extension to the basic data.

We tend to record on day two, just before turning out. Some organisation is needed to cover stillborn lambs and fostering. Most of the FarmIT 3000 routines do not need the SIRE to be recorded as hopefully you will have already recorded that at tupping time. What ram went to what ewes. The main software identifies the sire during the data import process. The routines include the lambing birth assistance and may include breeding traits. So vital data for SIGNET etc is easy to record.

Outdoor Lambing

Catching a Ewe - REALLY? NO!

When we first started recording outdoor, catching the ewe was considered the thing to do. Now we prefer pre marking the ewe with a larger number on her side.

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.

Flag Tags or Spray Numbers YES!

Much better, Manually reading a management tag or pre sprayed larger number on her side.

Most 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.

When the data is imported into teh FarmIT 3000 software the management number is used to identify the ewe. The lambs are created on the eid tag

Of course after a few years some of the ewes know more about operating the reader that the operator! They certainly keep a close eye on the tagging to ensure it is done correctly.

Sometimes aditional hands can help

If you are going to check the ewe, you need to catch her! BUT lambing outside needs to be simple!

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!

Recording Birth Weights

Again much easier inside, but if you have caught and tagged the lamb, it only take a few seconds.

Here Martin is using handheld electronic scales to weigh the lambs as soon as they are tagged. Again the details are recorded using a hand held 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.

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.

"EID hand in hand with farm management"

An Introduction to EID Readers