The National Sheep Association (NSA) is pleased to announce its involvement in an innovative project designing new equipment to measure and monitor lamb performance, reduce labour and protect lamb welfare during the weighing process.

The project, Lamb Monitor, was created following a partnership between David Ritchie (Implements) Ltd. and the UK Agri-Tech Centre, with funding from Defra and the Transforming Food Production Challenge Programme, run through Innovate UK – the UK’s innovation agency.

The weighing of growing lambs is seen as an essential task in lamb production to monitor liveweight gain and suitability of lambs for sale. But the task can be a time-consuming process causing stress for both the animal handler and the lambs themselves.

Traditionally, weighing is carried out as often as once a fortnight, meaning the gap in daily live weight gain (DLWG) is not being monitored. A new tool, an on-farm automated, in-field lamb weighing solution, designed by Ritchie as part of the project will enable more frequent datasets to be gained with no additional stress. Additional data will allow lamb producers to monitor growth rates, enabling a more accurate predication of lamb sales as well as providing useful information from which management changes, such as altering feeding, grazing and breeding, can be made.

Three different designs of equipment will be tested, with a walk-over weigher, creep feed attractant and climb on platform (designed to utilise a lamb’s play instinct), with a data-handling app also being developed alongside, which will work with all three designs.

The project will also develop a metered feed creep system to prevent dominant lambs getting more than their share of feed by providing a restriction on intake. Excess intake can lead to ill health in lambs.

Using one of Ritchie’s trial farms and three of the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s satellite farms, Ritchie will construct initial prototypes for each design of weigher and commission them on-farm for validation.

Participating farmers will continue to weigh lambs as they currently do, with data gathered from this method and the project auto-weighers compared to gain insights into the reliability and value of the data gathered from the auto-weigher, versus conventional weighing practice.

Lamb weight data will also be carried through to Ritchie’s existing auto-drafting equipment to allow lambs with sufficient weight data to be drafted automatically, reducing lamb stress and operator time at drafting.

Lifecycle assessment will be used to examine the differences in carbon intensity between lamb systems with and without auto-weigher solutions to quantify the difference daily live weight gain monitoring may bring.

Charlie Brown, Ritchie Product Development Manager says: “We hope to bring some level of automation and improved efficiency to the sheep industry with this product. The first prototype was created after farmer-led interactions. Following field trials and farmer feedback we are refining the product for our next trial of the prototype.”

Hayley Gerry, UK Agri-Tech Centre Project Manager adds: “This project has enabled the UK Agri-Tech Centre to bridge a gap industry has identified where efficiencies could be made. Using our farmer network, we can test and validate the prototypes in a commercial set up to allow for feedback from the farmers.”

The project aims to commercialise a product at the end of the research.

Project impacts

Research conducted by the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL) in 2020 showed how the use of tools, such as data capture, has a significant impact on the greenhouse gases (GHG) intensity of lamb production.

By finishing lambs at a younger age and reducing age at first lambing, among other factors, two hill farms had a 68% and 49% reduction in GHG emissions (kgCO2e/kgLW). A further lowland farm showed a reduction of 37% using these measures.

In addition, Morgan-Davis et al. (2018) estimated that precision livestock farming technology can save producers between 19% and 36% labour (£1.60-£3 per ewe) depending on the farm. This study did not include an auto-weigher, rather just performance recording using electronic identification and software package

The ability to use a lamb-monitor to expand on this will only add to the savings precision livestock farming tech can afford.

With regards to welfare, the sheep weigher will significantly reduce the time requirement for farmers allowing them to better use their time either on other needs in the enterprise or to help improve the work life balance of farms and farm workers.

Improved animal welfare is achieved through less gathering and handling of sheep, ensuring a higher welfare food product is produced as well as reducing the inherent risk in livestock handling to the farmers.

NSA Project Manager Nicola Noble comments: “Technology within the sheep sector is often linked to individual identification of lambs and it's great to see further investment in this area. The technology being developed should reduce costs, save time, potentially improve health and welfare while increasing levels of data recording and its accuracy, alongside increasing productivity and efficiency at a whole flock level. NSA looks forward to this project progressing.”

For further information about the work Ritchie does, visit www.ritchie-uk.com

To find out more about the projects the UK Agri-Tech Centre is working on, visit www.ukagritechcentre.com