Large flock electronic identification leads to a 10-fold return on investment
Wayne and Jody Pech, together with Wayne’s parents, Ken and Judith, manage ‘North Stirling Downs’, a 13 300 ha property in the shires of Gnowangerup, Cranbrook and Broomehill - Tambellup. Around 50% of the property is cropped with cereals/canola and the other 50% is used for running sheep. Approximately 17 000 merino ewes are mated annually with approximately 70% mated to merinos and 30% mated to suffolks. Wayne has bred his own rams for the last 15 years using a nucleus flock of 330 merino ewes and a nucleus flock of 137 suffolk ewes.
The Pech family have invested in electronic identification (EID) in their sheep flock and since 2015 and have been applying electronic eartags to the merino ewe lambs in both their commercial and nucleus flocks. They have also purchased a 3-way autodrafter, a touch–screen indicator (TSI) and a stick reader. They are collecting data on their sheep using EID at several points in their nucleus and commercial flocks. This includes body weight, pregnancy scanning data, eye muscle depth, worm egg counts and fleece weights.
The net present value (NPV) for Wayne and Jody introducing EID into their sheep enterprise is $163 000. This has a benefit cost ratio of 10.6, meaning that for every $1 invested, there is a $10.60 return. It will take five years to pay back the initial cost of the investment.
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