We have just purchased (with the help of an SRDP grant) a Shearwell Data electronic drafting and weighing crate with handheld computer and all the software. It is a fantastic piece of kit, but getting all our sheep onto the system is going to be a bit of a challenge.
For the younger sheep that are electronically tagged it is not so bad, we need to gather them, sort them into management groups, scan their tags and upload that data, entering their management group details - breed, date of birth (all sheep are now having their birthday on 20th April!) and so on before moving on to the next group.
It is the older sheep that are proving to be problem - I can decide whether to manually type in their existing tags, but that would mean I would have to read each one individually every time I did anything to it, or whether to add an electronic management tag, so I would only have to read their exisitng tag once, to cross reference. This makes more sense, but not keen on putting more holes in their ears than is necessary.
Also, my three year old thinks the whole thing looks really exciting, and wants to help, which is slowing the process down considerably.
Does anyone else use this system, and how did you get started off?
Topic: I think my brain is going to melt (Read 1114 times)
