As autumn lambing season finishes across the Wimmera, Agriculture Victoria are hosting two webinars examining the benefits of electronic identification and weaning prime lambs.
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The two webinars will be the start of the Agriculture Victoria Beef Sheep Networks webinar series, which will continue throughout winter.
The first webinar will be hosted on June 3, and will examine the commercial benefits of capturing lifetime data using electronic identification.
Agriculture Victoria Livestock Industry Development officer Alice Ritchie said the webinar will examine a case study from New Zealand.
"We have a case study with service provider Mark Ferguson and one of his farmers from New Zealand who has adopted sheep electronic identification for all sorts of uses on farms, but they did it entirely voluntarily," she said.
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"It is interesting to see how they have used it, how they find it creates value for their business and in particular at lamb marking."
Agriculture Victoria EID Technical Specialist Kirstie Anderson said by using electronic identification it was possible to capture data about the history of each lamb including litter size, the paddock it was born in, the team of rams used, the age of its mother and any faults at tailing.
"This forms the base of each animal's data. It's weights, condition scores, fleece weights, fleece measures and any classing information can then progressively be added to the animal's data record as it goes through the production year and its productive lifetime," she said.
At the second webinar, hosted on June 8, Dynamic Ag's Steve Cotton and Agriculture Victoria Mixed Farming Development officer Rachel Coombes will discuss the results of an on-farm demonstration that measured weaning outcomes for ewes and lambs at 12 to 14 weeks.
Ms Ritchie said one of the demonstrations was conducted at a farm in St Arnaud, and showed the benefits of weaning.
"It has been a really interesting story for them, they tried this idea thinking for some farmers it makes sense to wean your lambs and for others it is easier to sell them straight off their mums," she said.
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"At the end of the first year they got some really strong results showing that weaning was a good thing. So they'll be talking through the reasoning behind that and some of the surprising stuff that has come out of it.
"I think that will be a really interesting story and obviously very local for the Wimmera."
The webinars will feature a 30 to 45 minute presentation, with questions addressed during and after.
Ms Ritchie said the webinar series aimed to "bring things back to the farm", and sought farmers working on the land to speak at the presentation.
She said the webinars would be beneficial to farmers of all experience levels with mixed farming operations.
"Where we can we try to get a bit of a conversation going, so it is not just a lecture - and we find people get a lot of value from being able to relate it to their own business," she said.
"Timing wise this is really relevant, all the way from Portland to Swan Hill people are lambing, they have already started or they are going to be lambing in the next couple of months.
"There is value for a lot of people. For newer farmers there is value in being able to see some of the options out there. Particularly that first session is talking about how to use that technology and how to get good quality data and what you can do with it."
Ms Ritchie hoped farmers attending the webinars would be able to compare the case studies to their own operations, and import ideas to improve their business.
To register for the first webinar, visit https://eid_capturing_lifetime_data.eventbrite.com.au.
For the second webinar, visit https://to_wean_or_not_to_wean.eventbrite.com.au.
Both webinars will run from 7 to 8pm.
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