Lamb Survival - SE QLD Rangelands

Summary

This integrated R&D producer demonstration site (PDS) addresses the ‘Our Livestock’ priority of the MLA Strategic Plan by facilitating and demonstrating the adoption of objective management technologies to increase on farm productivity of sheep. By targeting reproductive performance, it also contributes to the priorities of the Sheep Reproduction Strategic Partnership.    

The lamb survival project will upskill core and observer producers, and producers nationally, by providing the skills and confidence to use the data collected on their sheep that can be interpreted with reliable confidence to help make informed decisions. With the investment in remote objective weight measurement (WOW) and objective condition scoring, this will have direct influence in increasing reproduction and decreasing mortality in the core and observer producers breeding flocks. This will directly improve their productivity and profitability. 

Objectives

By December 2025 in the SE QLD rangeland region, the project will demonstrate on six core producers’ properties the benefit of using Walk Over Weighing (WOW) and Condition Scoring (CS) to monitor weight / condition score and the resultant change on nutritional management and health decisions leading to a higher ewe conception and lamb survival rate of 23% over 4 years. 

1. The groups objectives for the PDS in order are:  

   • Conception (expressed as a % to total ewes joined) Increase by 15% in 4 years 

   • Lambs weaned to ewes joined (expressed as a %) Increase by 23% in 4 years. 

   • Lambing Ewe Survival (expressed as a %) 98.5% ewe survival in 4 years. 

   • Dry ewes at Lamb Marking (expressed as a %). 98.5% wet ewes in 4 years.  

   • All of these are measurable, with year 1 the start of the benchmarking process in core producers’ trial and control mobs.  

2. Core and observer producers will be trained through workshops in understanding the nutritional requirements of the sheep and to implement the nutritional program. 

3. Complete a benefit cost analysis of the advantages of this approach. By investing in the preventive objective tools of WOW and the hand-held CS, are core producers better off economically vs not using these tools. By having a trial and control mob on each of the core producers farms we will be able to complete a benefit cost analysis. This will include the purchase cost of the WOW and the hand-held objective condition score tool by producers once the 4-year project is completed. 

4. 100% of core producers and 80% of observer producers will have increased their knowledge, confidence and skill in WOW and CS. 

5. 90% of the core producers and 40% of the observer producers will have adopted WOW and CS in their sheep breeding program. 

6. Active producers (core and observer) using WOW and CS will know at what tracking weight / CS loss data signal (eg 100 gram /weight loss over 7 days) to implement preventive nutritional / health inputs to maintain good conception rates and live lamb body weights.  

7. Demonstrate to observer producers, through workshops, pregnancy scanning and condition scoring to help increase producer adoption. It would be expected that from the 180 observer producers 65% will be using pregnancy scanning by the end of the 4-year program.

Progress

Following widespread flooding in 2022 and 2023 provided further climatic challenges in the project area, with core producers experiencing a rapid decline in seasonal conditions, requiring drought management strategies to be implemented. This provided a good opportunity to walk over weigh units to be used in a year where identification of live weight reductions had the potential to be beneficial to decision-making and management. The learnings during this period were that while walk over weigh technology could effectively identify changes in liveweight of animals, the nature of the technology in requiring set-up and induction for animals made it impractical to use in a commercial setting where animals were required to be moved to available feed.

The project has since pivoted away from walk over weigh as a central technology of interest, with focus placed on the use of individual electronic ID and associated record keeping as the primary means for addressing the core project focus of increasing lamb survival.