As the hard season further squeezes to need for efficiency, more producers are looking to technology to make sure they are only feeding the stock that will make them money.
This has taken a lot of producers beyond simply hiring a contract pregnancy scanner to instead weighing up the cost benefit of owning their own gear.
Retailer of ultrasound pregnancy scanning gear for sheep and cattle, Philip Schoeffel, Advanced Farming Systems, Coffs Harbour, said he had seen a big swing towards farmers owning their own gear in the past couple years and had fielded strong demand for ultrasound equipment at this year’s Australian National Field Days, held at Borenore in October.
“That’s our primary focus, is the ultrasound equipment, and it’s largely due to the fact that breeders have to now ensure that those animals are that they’re running on their farm are profitable animals and are pregnant,” he said
“This equipment allows breeders to determine that very early in the gestation stage.”
He said while the drought had increased interest in this gear, a large amount of the growth in demand was happening regardless.
“The main focus with sheep is to improve the lambing rate from the national average of 72 per cent and now they’re using this equipment to improve that lambing average up to 150pc or 190pc over a four year period,” he said.
“They (farmers) do that quite simply by scanning the day they pull the ram out, picking up all their early joiners, all their multiples … and that way they can determine which are their most fertile animals on the farm – the ones that join early in an eight week joining period are going to be the most fertile animals.
“Those animals that joined later are less fertile and those are the ones they should be considering selling as scanned in lamb. It just gives you the information you wouldn’t otherwise have as a breeder.”
Tropical Beef Technology Services (TBTS) technical officer Paul Williams had also noticed an increasing uptake of ultrasound technology in the last four or five years as equipment prices reduced.
When it came to early pregnancy detection, particularly during artificial insemination and IVF programs, Mr Williams said the ultrasound technology was the most efficient.
"A lot of them that are doing AI programs or those doing IVF it gives them options when picking out females that are cycling and certainly for the early pregnancy stuff when doing fix timed AI," he said.
Mr Schoeffel recently received a call from 607,000 hectare property running 6500 head at Birdsville, Queensland, on which the grazier thought he had a fertility problem.
“He only had 40pc to 50pc calving rate and he asked me to come up. He flew me up there to do a scan after his next joining to determine whether he had to change his bull, change his cows, change his whole herd, which he was quite prepared to do, but it is a very expensive procedure after you’ve built up genetic material on your farm,” Mr Schoeffel said.
“We scanned his cattle and he had 95pc of his animals, six weeks after joining were pregnant, so he had a wonderful opportunity then to say his fertility was fine, but he had a problem elsewhere.
“And the problem this time of course was predators, but without this technology he couldn’t make decisions.”
While this helped solve a specific problem, for a lot of producers it was also being able to scan when their usual contractor would otherwise have been busy.
”When you own your own scanning gear, it allows the owner to do smaller mobs as the stock come through the yards, as well as more than one scan through the gestation period,” Mr Schoeffel said.
This allowed later scans further into pregnancy to draft the flock according to multiple births or timing of lambing.
Mr Schoeffel also offers training with farmers, which he uses to decide which gear would best suit the operation.
”I charge a $550 training fee to attend a property and to bring the equipment to allow them to use it practically,” he said.
“By the time we’ve done a day’s work they’re very confident in the technology.”
The scanning units retail at about $5500 to $11,000, “so we try to match the equipment to what the breeder’s wanting to achieve”.