engleski

Use of electronic identification in milk production control on diary sheep farm

Daily production control in diary flocks is very important for farm management. On the sheep diary farms, control is usually done by individual animal identification and gathering of milk production data. Small ruminants are usually tagged with ear tags but this tagging system especially in extensive production systems is not reliable. Ruminal boluses (RFID) are first choice for ruminant tagging because they are easy and early applicable, easy to read and fraud resistant. Besides good traceability, use of readers for electronically tagged animals gives new opportunities in gathering animal production data. Programmable hand held readers (Gesreader2, Rumitag) with hand antennas are suitable devices for sheep milk control. We programmed readers for milk control with following data to be collected: animal identification (conventional and electronic) with date automatically and milk control data which should be put in readers manually. From readers data are easily transferred to computer in very simple format which could be used in any statistical software. In our trial milk control was done in accordance with A4 method (ICAR) two controls per control day (24 hours) every 30 days. In period from April to June of 2008 four readings were made for purposes of milk control on 608 sheep. Sheep were tagged with ruminal boluses (Rumitag 20 g, hdx). Average milk yield for morning control was 0.46 L and for evening control was 0.33 L. In all four readings we had quite high reading failure (5.88% on average). Probable cause for this could be use of hand held readers in crowded environment which caused lot of double readings (reading same animal twice). We concluded that electronic identification is useful in sheep milk control but the reading protocol should be improved.

RFID; sheep; milk control

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