RFID technology helps farmers round up livestock more efficiently, provide and manage feed and water, and manage basic livestock health monitoring such as the frequency with which animals visit feeding stations. Electro-com’s RFID technologies, such as tags and readers, allow farmers to meet strict NLIS (
National Livestock Identification System) requirements that require they have the ability to trace livestock from the property of birth to slaughter; which is crucial to the safety of red meat.
The Australian meat and livestock industry is regarded as one of the most efficient and cost effective in the world. By nature it is also conservative, pragmatic and cost sensitive.
This is why the Australian red meat industry has implemented a national system to ensure the quality and safety of beef, lamb, sheep and goat meat.
The NLIS was introduced in 1999 to meet European Union requirements for cattle exports. It has expanded to enable cattle, sheep and goats to be traced from property of birth to slaughter for the following purposes:
- Biosecurity
- Meat safety
- Product integrity
- Market access
How Can Electro-Com Help You?
Wholly Australian-owned, Electro-com supplies industry leader’s solution providers with industry leading RFID technologies from trusted suppliers such as Texas Instruments.
RFID transponders are worn as ear tags or as an inter-ruminal capsules. Farm management can be fully automated for such processes as feeding, weighing, disease management, and breeding practices.
Low frequency (LF) RFID, with an operating frequency of 134.2 kHz, has been adopted internationally for animal identification applications following many years of development, exhaustive testing and practical field evaluation.
Do Do I Need To Tag My Sheep?
At present, the identification of sheep using RFID technology is not yet mandatory and only applies to cattle, but may soon become necessary when a nominated RFID standard has been agreed upon by the NLIS & Sheep-Cooperative Research Centre.
LF 134.2kHz technology is proven to be the most effective technology for livestock identification. It is currently being used for cattle identification therefore making it the logical choice for sheep identification. Other technologies are being considered but the performance and reliability is still questionable. LF 134 kHz HDX RFID technology is the only system that has long term, proven performance in the field with large animals.
RFID identification for sheep is seen to have many advantages over current line-of-sight tagging systems.
- Difficulties in visual sheep methods (requiring manual animal restraint)
- Build-up of grime on the tag obscures barcodes
- Sheep management currently occurs on a flock to flock basis, the benefit and value of identifying individual sheep is not being taken advantage of.
- Automatic capture of identification data with long range and high throughput capability
- Easier management of flock information- the reduction in the need for paperwork and manual input
- Electronic identification eliminates never-ending paperwork and allows farmers to have accurate livestock data on hand.
- Allows for speedy information and statistics retrieval
- Allows for individual sheep management
- Accurate traceability for animal disease management
- Significant cost savings within the wool pipeline
