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Auto-drafter can make sheepyard life 'a breeze'
Easy Drafting: The Prattley auto drafter used by SARDI at the Turretfield research centre makes drafting sheep a more efficient process when used in conjunction with electronic eartags. Pictured are SARDI Senior Research Officer Kaylene Jaensch and SARDI Senior Agricultural Officer Richard Grimson.
Courtesy Stock Journal By ALISTAIR LAWSON
An auto-drafter used at one of South Australia's research centres is turning out to be boon in the sheep pens.
It was set up by the South Australian Research & Development Institute at its Turretfield Research Centre about five years ago.
SARDI Livestock Systems' Darryl Smith said that when used in conjunction with electronic eartags, the Prattley auto-drafter makes drafting sheep "a breeze".
"We couldn't do without it basically; we use it every day," Mr Smith said. "We have got two out at Turretfield; a five-way drafter and a three-way drafter. The five-way is set up permanently in the main sheepyards and the three-way is a portable unit that we use on the other property, and off-centre."
Mr Smith said he would have given up in his job a long time ago if not for the auto-drafter.
"In conjunction with the electronic eartags it's ideal for flock management, data collection, monitoring liveweights and how the flock is going."
SARDI leader of livestock breeding and genetics Forbes Brien was similar in his praise of the auto-drafter. From a research and development perspective, it saved "a lot of time".
"In a research and development area, we do a lot of drafting-up for demonstrations or for particular selection programs or field days," Dr Brien said.
A scenario where a drafter had to separate 1000 sheep into 15 different groups on the basis of a certain criteria such as weight groups would have once been "an all-day job".
"If you had a set of scales and had the sheep individually tagged, then what you would have to do is go through the records and rank them all on their weight," he said. "Then you would have to come up with a tag list of the ones in the heaviest group and then go and find those animals with those eartags," he said.
"The auto-drafter makes that process incredibly efficient. You might only have to do one pass to get animals drafted into five different groups.
"What might have once taken us all day now only takes us an hour. From a research perspective it's brilliant."
*Story sourced from Stock Journal
