– by C. Morgan-Davies and A. McLaren (SRUC)
The SRUC Hill & Mountain Research Centre, in the West Highlands of Scotland, is where one of the UK pilot trials was held. The research and demonstration farm is 2200 ha of mostly mountain pastures, with a low stocking density of sheep, typical of extensive farming systems in Scotland. The location was chosen to test some of the TechCare PLF tools in more challenging environments. The welfare priorities for these systems are mostly associated with nutrition, lameness, gastrointestinal parasites and mismothering issues. The technologies tested were the Electronic Identification (EID) weight crate coupled with a Low Frequency (LF) Radio-frequency identification (RFID) antenna reader, and a Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID ear-tag and antenna reader. The SRUC team carried out 2 trials in winter, when the pregnant ewes are supplementary fed outside on rough grazing ground. The first trial was in January-February 2022, with 100 ewes, and the second was in February 2023 with 50 ewes. The ewes were weighed using the EID weigh crate and body condition scored at the beginning of each trial, then every 2 weeks after until the end. Welfare assessments were also carried out at these times (lameness and fleece scores), as well as in the field (lameness). Ewes had access to high energy feed blocks, situated below an UHF antenna reader. Every time the ewes visited the block, a reading was taken. The UHF data were collected by the PageUp system. The pilot was trying to ascertain whether visits to resources could be monitored using the UHF system, and if the information collected could be used as a proxy for a welfare issue. Weight change was also monitored as another potential proxy. The UHF system worked, and the ewes were detected by the antenna when they visited the feed block. However, there were issues relating to connectivity and power in the field. Some days failed, or were affected, due to issues with the portable battery or the weather (e.g. heavy rain affecting the equipment and/or readability). There were differences observed between ewes as to how often they visited the feed block, with some rarely visiting at all. Analyses are still ongoing to check whether the change in visits is linked to a welfare issue. One of the problems we had with our data collection is that very few ewes had any welfare issues recorded (e.g. only ~ 12 out of 100 in 2022 and 4 out of 50 in 2023). We are pooling data with the other Scottish pilot trials to increase the sample size to hopefully have a more meaningful analysis. However, these trials have shown that the UHF system can monitor presence/absence of ewes at a resource point. It is also possible to record more than one animal at the time (different settings) and could be used in gateway to measure order of passage or proximity to one another (e.g. ewe/lamb).
Weight and animal welfare data collected from the SRUC pilots have also been uploaded on the project sharing platform API-AGRO. If you are interested, you can access them using the link.
