EID tags assist effective sheep flock management

At a glance

Tom, Anne and Tim Costello
Location: The Grange, Hawarden, North Canterbury 
2800 Wairere Romney ewes, 700 hoggetts, Friesian bulls, 150 rising two-year olds and 150 rising one-year old.
RapID tag 

Challenges

• Monitoring weight gain before weaning, between lambs that were tailed and those that weren’t.
• Extra work associated with recording information.

Benefits

• Helps monitor the performance of the ewe flock including ewes with twins and singles.
• Easy to draft out hoggets that aren’t in lamb.
• RapID tag is quite robust with low loss rate. 

Background

The couple farm a 540 hectare (effective) hill country property at Rangiwahia, north of Feilding, Manawatu. They were participants in the FarmIQ pilot programme which gave them an early insight into the power of more data and its capacity to provide deeper traceability for meat processing partner Silver Fern Farms. The programme paid tagging costs for their entire lamb drop from 2013 to 2017, but the Hopkins have continued to tag each year’s ewe hogget replacements since the programme ended.