One beef farmer took the bull by the horns and is now successfully using electronic identification (EID) to improve business

Getting a phone alert which tells you one of your cows hasn’t had anything to drink so far today is definitely the future.

So is data monitoring that reveals which cattle are still achieving a costeffective weight gain and which simply need to be moved on before they start losing you money.

The management horizon for livestock farmers is clearly changing.

Whereas in the past, livestock were checked daily by an experience stockman, today’s approach is increasingly likely to feature any one of a number of ear tag sensors now on the market.

Such items can be programmed to record drinking times and number of visits, whether or not a cow has emerging disease issues, or to flag up the news that some of your most valuable stock are being moved away from the field you put them in this morning.

For Dumfries & Galloway beef farmer, Alistair Kingan, the technology he’s using isn’t exactly new, but has certainly become increasingly effective in recent years and is still being developed in both in scope and capacity.

“We started using electronic identification (EID) tags 10 years ago,” he said.

“It was useful even then, of course, and it’s definitely making a lot of difference to our business today.”

Running Kingan Farms, Thornhill, in partnership with his wife, Suzi, and his mum and dad, Margaret and Russell Kingan, Alistair finishes 1,400 cattle a year across the family’s farming units of Lochhill, Overton and Tibbers.

Having initially introduced EID to the business as a management recording tool, using it to run their cattle passport system, he’s now employing it to address a whole range of electronic identification and monitoring activities.

“In terms of straightforward recording, to begin with, we’ve now been completely paperless at the cattle crush for the last two years,” said Alistair.

“Whatever the task in hand, such as weighing or dosing, I merely enter the animal’s EID number into my tablet alongside the relevant weight or treatment details and everything we need to know gets sent to the cloud for me to access anytime and anywhere I want.”

While current systems obviously differ between farming businesses, sometimes hindering the easy transfer of farm-to-farm details, a recent Kingan Farms experience gave Alistair a glimpse of what the future might hold as the development of EID technology continues to progress.

“We use Allflex EID tags, working alongside Farmwizard livestock management software, and recently bought a batch of calves for finishing from a farmer who happened to be on exactly the same two systems,” he said.

“As a result, we were able to gain immediate electronic access to the entire history of each of the calves we bought. We also had all their history available to us in an accessible format, in one place and under one system.”

Being committed to producing top quality beef under the Scotch Beef label, and to do so in a sustainable and ethical manner, such details are clearly of commercial value to Kingan Farms and their business reputation.

Monitoring and analysing growth performance has also become easier across their three-unit operation, with the EID system being capable of identifying which animals are still converting expensive feed into costeffective weight gain and which are no longer performing as they should.

“Once an animal stops adding weight effectively it needs to be marketed,” said Alistair, adding that keeping it longer just to hit a specific target weight can prove extremely costly.

Kingan Farms’ stockmen – Gordon Mckenna, who has been with the business for 40 years, and Michael Clingan – are also fully on board with the increasing part that EID technology is playing in the business.

“Having worked with traditional methods in the past, it would have been easy for them to have been scared of this technology,” said Alistair.

“As it is, they think it’s brilliant. Our scale of operation, which requires us to run an open book production and management system, couldn’t operate as it does without good input from our staff.

“For me, meanwhile, I basically have my whole farm on my phone. That includes all cattle details, chemical records, fertiliser figures and so on.

“It’s the way forward. I’m convinced of that.”

Beef farmer Alistair Kingan says he has benefited from using EID technology in his day-to-day business.