Utilising eID - Get your data right the FIRST time.

"Don’t make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don’t revisit the issue unnecessarily." ~ Bill Gates

Sorry about the delay in getting this article out. I'll attempt to get back on track next month!

It's been great to see a bit of rain around lately. This year was one of the more pleasant lamb marking periods we've had, but it's nice to see a bit of heat and summer storms around.

Making use of eID

Last month I introduced the conversation around getting data right for eIDs.

To summarise it in one sentence, you need to start simple and start with the right data structure.

We'll build on that today by explaining a framework that helps you decide what data to record and how to record it. It is important to know how data is stored on eID devices to ensure your data remains usable.

I'll show you how the framework works by using a couple of examples of data that I think everyone needs to record.

Data recording framework

1. What do I want to know or achieve?
2. What data point/s will help me?
3. How will I use the data?
4. When will I record it?
5. What type of trait?
6. What will it be called?

Let's go through each of these steps using 🐣birth type and 🤰Pregnancy status as an example:

1. What do I want to know or achieve?

Back to the "keep it simple" mindset. Whenever you consider recording more data, first have your end goal in mind. You don't want to be recording more data than you need! This is where your Genetic Plan is invaluable. Work out what you need to know to make accurate and effective decisions that advance you towards your goal.

At the same time, recognise that it is extremely difficult to manage something if you don't measure it.

Also, in most cases, what you measure, moves! If you want to improve a trait in your sheep, the fastest way is to measure it.

 

🐣Birth Type

For this example, the thing I want to achieve is accuracy. If you want to make effective visual classing decisions that improve your genetics, you must be able to distinguish between what is genetic and what is not.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

In this case, I want to improve the fertility of my flock, and also ensure I am not selecting against animals with twins because they will likely be poorer at the end of lambing.

 

2. What data point/s will help me?

With the goal in mind, what specific measurement, trait score or record do you need? Remember it needs to provide you with information to assist your classing decisions.

Some of these will be obvious. If you want to increase weaning weights, then you measure the weight at weaning! But also try to think through the unintended consequences of measuring a single trait. Life is extraordinarily complex. If you change one thing, you inevitably influence many other things unintentionally.

For weaning weight, the most obvious unintended consequence will be bigger sheep. Two 30kg lambs might weigh the same, but if one came from a 50kg ewe and the other from a 60kg ewe, the one from a 50kg ewe is more efficient! It might require a couple traits to account for those other consequences.

🐣Birth Type

In order to achieve accuracy, we need to account for environmental factors. As I've mentioned before, the main thing affecting the visual appearance of a sheep (assuming they are run in the same paddock) is whether they were born a single or twin, or born from a maiden or mature ewe. Thus, we need to record the “Birth type” and the “Mother type”.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

This is pretty obvious - I need to know the pregnancy status of the ewe.

3. How will I use the data?

This is an important point to consider, because this will help you answer questions 5 & 6. Our goal is to make data easy to use so that it gets used! Having data in the correct form can have a major impact on its usability.

Try to think of different scenarios that you may also use in the future. You want to allow a certain amount of flexibility to manipulate the data in different ways.

Let's work through our examples to see what I mean.

 

🐣Birth Type

Mostly, this will be used to draft animals into their 4 groups ahead of their major classing event when selecting replacement ewes. (The 4 groups are single from maiden, twin from maiden, single from mature, twin from mature). Most likely this will happen only once. Some people I know only select from twin born ewes where possible as part of their strategy to improve fertility.

Another use will be for interrogating your data in the future. Perhaps you lamb into sire groups and want to see how many twins you got from a particular sire. Or you might be curious to see what difference being a twin born lamb has on weaning weight for you; so you will use this information to filter and compare the data.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

There will be several uses for the pregnancy status:

-Determining the fertility of an individual ewe (tracking how many lambs she has over her lifetime).

-Drafting twin bearing & single bearing ewes into separate mobs ahead of lambing to provide better feed for the twins.

-Classing twins separately to singles post weaning so that you don't disproportionally cull twinning ewes.

-Collect your annual pregnancy and weaning percentages (for most people this is a key indicator of farm profitability.)

4. When will I record it?

I might be overstating this, but keep it simple! You need to think through how to make it easy, with minimal extra time or effort as possible!

Also, think about ways that recording data may even replace a task. As an example, there are farms that have changed the way they class sheep. Instead of making the decision on the spot for each sheep, they determine the 5-8 traits that are most important to them and score each animal with all those traits. While that may sound time consuming, it means that they can take that data back to the office, rank the sheep, and keep exactly the number they need. No going back through and reclassing the “maybe” group.

You certainly don't want to get sheep in for the sole purpose of collecting data, so utilise times that sheep are already running through the race.

 

🐣Birth Type

I discussed some options in an earlier article. The simplest way is to lamb your ewes out into their 4 groups. As you mark, set your eID reader to auto-record the birth type/mother type and scan each lamb as you tag it.

Alternatively, tag the lambs in sequential order, writing down the tag number of the first and last lamb of each mob. Next, use the tag bucket file in excel to bulk update each mob with the birth type/mother type and import that data to your devices.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

Many scanners will already be recording the data as they scan, so it might be as easy as getting the file off them and importing it into your devices. Otherwise, the best way is likely to have the drafter/raddler record each ewe as the scanner calls out the result. Or perhaps replace that job.

 

5. What type of trait?

When using most eID stick readers and scale heads on the market, they have two main “types” of traits. They might be called different things, but in general terms they are “session data” and “lifetime data”.

Session data (maybe called “trait data" or “activity data”) is data that will change each time it is measured. The prime example of this is weights - every time the animal goes over the scales, it will likely be a different weight. That way, for a single trait (weight), there will be multiple different values at different times over the lifetime of that animal.

Lifetime data (maybe called “life data” or ?) is a trait that can only have one value at a time. This is for things like breed, birth type, date of birth, etc that will always stay the same. It also works for something like “status”, which may change (e.g. from currently on farm to sold), but you only care about its current status - so you still only have one value that updates if it is changed.

How you plan to use the data and how you plan to record the data will determine what type of record will suit.

I would suggest that in nearly all cases, however, you will want to save traits as Lifetime data. This is because on the systems I've used, you cannot have session data displayed on the screen - the assumption is that you will be entering new data instead.

Even with weights, I would recommend transferring weights from session data into a Lifetime trait. It is nearly always valuable to have a weight at weaning, so create a trait called WWT (for weaning weight). If you aim to sell your lambs at 10 months of age, then a weight then will be valuable information. So you could create a trait for that as well (perhaps called Weigh10 or 10WT).

This also allows you to easily compare animals across years, whereas it is very tricky to tease out weights from separate sessions.

 

🐣Birth Type

Birth/mother type is straight forward - each animal will only ever be a twin or single. The only decision is whether you have 1 or 2 traits. It is possible to combine them into the one “Birth type” trait with 4 options. However, if you ever decide to record triplets for example, that becomes 6. If your device can only have a few traits, I would combine them, but otherwise I would have 2 traits.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

This is trickier and comes down to how you will mostly use the data. A couple options are:

Trait	Pros	Cons
Use session data	Easy to record. Simple to get overall preg test results at the time.	Will require a bit of work to create a draft list or display twin/single at classing. Difficult to go back in time and see historical scores. Difficult to see the lifetime performance of ewes.
Create a separate trait for each age stage of an animal. “Preg scan 1” for 1 year old ewe, "Preg scan 2" for a 2 year old, etc.	Easy to display lifetime performance of your ewes on the device. Easy to compare animals between years.	Impossible to record the data unless you are only scanning 1 age group at a time. You would need to record the data as session data, then transfer that information to the traits later. Very difficult to see your results from a particular year.
Create a separate trait for each year. “Preg 2024” for all ewes scanned in 2024.	Easy to record. Easy to see results from a particular year. Easy to display recent performance on your device.	More difficult to compare lifetime performance across different ages.

As you can see, there can be a bit to consider! My recommendation is to have a separate trait for each year. Then, you can create an additional trait for lifetime performance and use Excel to join together all preg scan results. So a ewe that has had 1,2,0,1 lambs would have “Preg Lifetime” of 1201 for example.

 

6. What will it be called?

The number one rule here is that you must be consistent. It will become a mess if one year you have “Preg 2024”, then the next is “25 Preg”. You also don't want to have the options be “empty, single, twin” one year and then “0, 1, 2” the next.

Make it meaningful for you. Naming conventions are pretty subjective, so take the examples below with a grain of salt and use what you will recognise easily.

If the trait has a list of options, you also need to consider what each option is called.

Having systems here will be very useful to ensure everyone uses the same names each year. Which gives me an idea for next month's article…

 

🐣Birth Type

I'm suggesting 2 traits:
-Birth type with the options Single, Twin, or Triplet.
-Mother type with the options maiden, mature, lamb (if you join ewe lambs).

Or combine into one trait “Birth type" with options: Maiden single, Maiden twin, Mature single, Mature twin.

 

🤰Pregnancy Status

I would go with Preg YYYY (Preg 2025 for next year). Some systems don't like headings that start with a number. Use numbers so that you can calculate percentages easily: 0, 1, 2, 3.

Then create an additional trait, Preg lifetime. This will be a list of all prior preg testing results. E.g. 1211 or 11210

Conclusion

If you take a little bit of time to think these options through at the start, you will save yourself a lot of headaches in the future. Your eID tags will become useful and you will be able to make meaningful decisions that will help you improve your genetics faster.

It might seem like a lot at first, but if you stick to these questions you'll have your traits setup in no time!

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Best wishes
The team at Rissmerino.