A better way to breed

Farmlands Head of Enabling Technology, John Arrell, spent a day at Farmlands Chairman Rob Hewett’s farm finding out about smart collars for sheep and how the data they provide is used to optimise breeding outcomes.

An early morning start in Central Otago led me to a woolshed on our Chairman, Rob Hewett’s farm. I’ve been involved with precision farming for over 20 years, starting off with satellite based control of machinery and evolving to work with data-driven information on our soils as the technology evolved – knowing what to put on and where to get maximum return on investment. This was my first time working with smart technology on sheep and working with sheep themselves was a new endeavour for me. What I learned was that precision farming on land and soils had exactly the same principals as precision farming on livestock. The key to both is the ability to measure. Here’s what I mean — I used to give talks to National Farmers Union groups back in the UK on precision farming. I always opened up a presentation with the question: “Who knows what precision farming is?” I used to get loads of answers from the audience and the majority mentioned satellites. I then turned the conversation around and always put up the image of a man ploughing behind a horse with a one furrow plough. I then challenged the answers with the statement that horse ploughing was the ultimate in precision farming and our goal is to get back to that. Let me explain my answer. When a farmer ploughed with a horse he walked every inch of the soil and was deeply connected to it. When the soil type changed, he put in a fence, hedge or boundary and farmed that smaller paddock to its yield and crop potential. His farmyard manure was his finite fertiliser source and he only put it onto paddocks that he knew needed it and would get a return in-terms of a better crop or to enhance poorer land. He suppressed weeds by using rotations and knew what crops should be planted for that soil type. As agriculture across the world evolved to meet population demands – to an extent driven by World War II – it got increasingly mechanised with tractors replacing the horse and a disconnect from walking the land. As tractors got larger the smaller paddocks of similar soil type became inefficient to work and we began to

| Smart Shepherd collars enable breeding decisions to be made with confidence. | Ewes are fitted with a ‘master’ receiving collar.

gradually remove the hedgerows and fences to make way for larger and larger machines. With larger machines and larger paddocks, we moved away from the granularity and understanding of the total farm system and replaced a lot of this knowledge with uniform treatment of artificial fertiliser and agri-chemicals, to drive our food production system. I am in no way criticising this move. It was right for the evolution of our industry at the time but it’s no longer fit for purpose. It’s not granular enough and we have to get back to understanding our soils and variability within our soils. We need to use smart sensors to be the farmers feet on the ground and use technology to put in virtual paddock boundaries of similar soil types and treat them as such. We need to view our artificial fertiliser as a finite resource and put it on sparingly.

What does this have to do with sheep?

Founder of Smart Shepherd NZ, Aimee Charteris and I had a long in-depth conversation, both about my own experience of founding a start-up in the Agri-tech space and landbased precision farming. What was remarkable was the same principals of precision farming I have been championing for the last 20 years, were exactly the same principals Aimee and her team are championing in Smart Shepherd: granularity, information and using data to make more informed decisions. My analogy for soil was replacing the farmers feet with smart sensors to understand the soil to grow the best crops. Smart Shepherd effectively has the same philosophy of using sensors on each sheep within a large flock, to be the shepherd’s eyes and ears, understanding the traits of each ewe in terms of her ability to raise quality lambs. These traits are linked to her progeny intergenerationally so a sustainable high-performance flock can be built and improved on through timely, accurate and detailed information. As a woolly novice, Aimee kindly explained to me optimal sheep reproduction. The quality and long- term outcome of a lamb’s performance is dictated by early and late pregnancy nutrition, which will influence how well the mother has raised her lamb in the first 6 weeks of its life. Therefore, flock performance is dictated by how good the ewes are at getting pregnant with multiple foetuses and then how good they are at raising their lambs. It’s no different than any other species on this planet including ourselves.

| EID tags are applied at docking to so the Smart Shepherd collars can identify each animal.

So how does Smart Shepherd work?

There are two requirements. Firstly, each animal needs to have an EID ear tag so the farmer can track information over the animal’s life. All lambs are tagged at docking with an EID tag to allow the Smart Shepherd collars to be linked to a unique animal identifier. The EID tag is a once-in-alifetime requirement for each animal. The second part is to put the Smart Shepherd collars on to both ewes and lambs annually, usually between docking and weaning. The ewe collars are receivers (“masters”) and the lamb collars are broadcasters (“slaves”). When a lamb continually comes into close contact with the ewe, the master collar picks up a Bluetooth signal from the lamb’s slave collar. This data is continually stored in the ewe’s collar. The collars are then removed from all sheep after a period of about 48 hours and the data retrieved from the ewe’s master collar. This data is then analysed with smart algorithms to match up ewes with lambs. This information is appended to each individual animal’s EID tag in their ear. This provides an “electronic DNA test”, linking the mother to the child and ultimately will provide a whole-of-life actual production record for each ewe and her offspring, which can be tracked intergenerationally. At weaning, the lambs are weighed and the ewe’s body condition is recorded. This data is cross-referenced with the sensor, identifying ewes that show multiples when pregnant, go on to raise multiples and wean heavy lambs. Then at pre-tup they have a sufficiently solid body condition score to enable easy conception with multiple foetuses and thus repeat the cycle. Knowing categorically the best ewes in the flock and ensuring they (and their offspring) are selected preferentially for future breeding, will raise the per-head

| Smart Shepherd collars are attached to track contact between ewes and lambs.

performance of the flock and help to optimise the output of the lambs produced for the farmer.

More from less

The result is: more efficiency, less work, less carbon emissions per kilo of produce grown, more sustainability and a higher level of known performance. In two words – smarter farming. Just like my own experience in landbased precision farming, Smart Shepherd enables the granularity of smaller flocks and more time spent out in the paddock to once again become a reality at scale. Just like farming with horses, farmers in the past knew their ewes better, they had smaller flocks that were easier to manage and selected the best ewes year on year to breed from. In my opinion and from my exposure to the technology, Smart Shepherd is a massive leap forward in getting back to the great management of the past, that has not been possible with large commercial flocks. Being granular, being able to measure lamb performance at weaning and being able to directly attribute performance to the ewe who bred the lamb – and raised it during its early life – is a game changer. From the results achieved at Rob Hewett’s farm, the Smart Shepherd system returned a ewe-matching figure of 94-99 percent over 3,102 lambs born to a total of 2,026 ewes. Smart Shepherd is still a young company refining the proposition to the wider market and ensuring the data they are collecting is accurate and useful. This is an exciting new technology that many sheep farmers will be keeping a close eye on as the company and the commercial proposition evolves.

| Measuring performance at weaning and linking to the ewe responsible is a game changer.

Don’t wear out a single solution, mix it up

Herbicide resistance is a challenge no farm advisor or grower can afford to ignore. The cost of resistance is well documented, globally impacting not only on crop output but also reducing rotational choice, income and asset value.

In New Zealand since 1979, 20 different weed species have developed resistance to herbicides from one or multiple mode of action groups, including glyphosate1—perhaps our most commonly used herbicide. While on a global scale this number is low (compared to 161 in the United States, 91 in Australia and 27 in the United Kingdom1), it highlights that it is not too late for us to modify our weed management practices to maintain farming viability – ensuring essential herbicides such as glyphosate remain effective for longer. So how do we achieve this? Well we simply mix it up, ensuring our weed control strategies are diverse, and incorporate non-chemical as well as chemical control tools without reliance on any single solution.

NON-CHEMICAL

Crop rotation broadens your herbicide control options, and this is just one example of non-chemical weed control. Other non-chemical measures you can use to reduce the impact of weeds include: increasing your seeding rates to increase crop competition, especially with cereals; not over grazing to ensure you maintain highly productive and competitive pastures; spray topping to reduce weed seed set in pastures the year prior to cropping; and cultivation to deeply bury weed seeds prior to planting.

CHEMICAL

With herbicides it is important to not only use them at full label rates but to also ensure you rotate between herbicide mode of action groups and not just herbicide brand names. (Fact: New Zealand has 88 glyphosate brands registered2 to 25 registrants and they all belong to the same herbicide mode of action – Group G.) To improve control and reduce weed escapes, always target young, actively growing weeds. Make sure the correct adjuvants are used. When applying a knockdown herbicide always look at reducing weed resistance selection pressure by tank-mixing it with another herbicide. The ideal partner is one that not only represents a different mode of action but is also effective in its own right against target weeds. For me this is Sharpen® . Sharpen is a fast-acting, broad-spectrum herbicide and being the only systemic herbicide from Group E (the group that includes carfentrazone), applying it in a tank-mix with glyphosate results in far less regrowth across more weed species than alternative treatments allow. While the development of resistance can’t be totally prevented or reversed, it can be forestalled and its impact managed if we all take action now and incorporate the “mix it up” philosophy into our weed control strategies.

Grant Hagerty

Development Manager New Zealand

To learn more about weed control strategies, visit crop-solutions.basf.co.nz or call your local area sales manager on 0800 932 273.