 Our next speaker is Georgie Cainz from Cainz Station. Georgie is a sixth generation farmer managing her family's property at Cainzton. She works on the property with her husband Toby and her parents. The property runs marino use with a proportion mated to bordelester rams to turn off first cross use. They have a focus on pushing their lambing percentages to get as many lambs on the ground as possible making sure all of their use on the property are performing the best that they can. Georgie is also the executive officer for Barossa Improved Grazing Group which is a farmer network aiming to improve the land, livestock, businesses and people components of local grazing businesses. Georgie and her family are also one of the red meat and wool programs focus farms. I'd like to welcome Georgie to talk about adoption of agtech on her property. Thanks Georgie. Thanks Georgie and thanks very much for having me here today. Yeah this is our property Cainz Station. As Georgie said I'm the sixth generation. I farm the business with my husband Toby. I managed to squeeze him and bring him back into our family business. He's a boiler maker by trade so I'm fantastic for our business and we run thanks Georgie and we run the business with my parents. Yeah we run about 3,000 hectares in Cainzton which is the other side of the Barossa Valley on the eastern side. Yeah we basically run 3,000 Reno U's up here. We focus on having as many lambs on the ground as possible like these guys here. That was last year in one of our smaller mobs that yeah didn't obviously land on that many to that U but it looked pretty good for the photo. So yeah our real focus is getting as many lambs on the ground as possible so we want to make sure that we get our U's running as well as they possibly can and getting the most out of them. We also so of our 3,000 U's we lamb down about a thousand to Bordelester first cross lambs. We also have a block in the southeast so the U portion goes down there and grows out from September and then gets sold on and the weather portion we've just started running through our feedlot so the first year that we've done that this year and it worked really well. So yeah so those Bordelesters we use them so we're actually trying to increase that that to about 1,500 over the next couple of years. We see them as a really excuse me a really good release valve for our business so if we're getting a tough year we can get rid of them early and yeah move them on and we're looking at keeping our 2,000 U's that are mated to Moreno's as well. We also have some cattle but they are mostly running our avenue range block in the southeast and just the heifers come back up here. So this is the sort of country that we're dealing with to the western end of the property is the high rainfall area sort of 500 mill rainfall. We crop well sorry we pasture about 150 hectares of that and then the rest of the property is sort of we've got a couple of couple of thousand hectares to this which is sort of unarrowable but rolling hills and that feed base is basically just what's out there. So I'm a bit of native a little bit of Philaris and then your barley grass and all of that sort of stuff as well and then another thousand hectares that we've got is this country which is native hills pasture so very rocky, very steep sort of half a DSE per hectare out there. So yeah we sort of get down 500 mill rainfall here sort of 400 here down to about 300 to 250 out here and obviously with the last few years it's been about half that. So we run a U containment lot this is our use in there at the moment. The last couple of years we've run all 3000 U's through there for sort of three to four months through the summer so yeah we really rely on that to make sure that our U's stay in condition score three so that we can get as many lands on the ground and look after our country side because it's pretty fragile so yeah that that's a key component of our business but obviously very expensive component of the business for the fodder that we run through there. We shear eight monthly which really stuffs around the system but if we go for that year then we get too long and we have a real problem with staple strength so we've gone to that eight monthly shearing just to make sure that we can maintain the staple strength. As Jodi said the other side of me is the Barossa Improve Grazing Group I'm the executive officer so that's really helped to expand ideas particularly for the Barossa region but yeah also get involved with that with the networking and learning about lots of different ideas going on around the region. So one of the first things that we did probably eight years ago we took on a RAM stud that we took on from somebody else and that really got us into the EID space. We've since gotten out of that RAM stud it was just way too much work for the amount of effort that we put in and we worked out we could actually make more from our commercial side of things so but yeah that that was how we got into it we'd certainly been looking at doing it for quite a while but now we use these little tags here this one's the EID tag there is a management tag that goes with that but we have since stopped using them because yeah we didn't find that we needed to correlate both numbers and it was just too much information so we just stick with the straight EID tag if they lose it that's just bad luck and we lose their information but in a commercial side of things we just don't worry too much about that that's just a bit of bad luck. We do also we keep this this is a red tag view so she's a made it to a cross spread we have found that we want to keep using that visual tag because you can see if you're using the mob without having to run them through the auto draft so yeah we still find that that's really valuable because occasionally we'll get you know use jump in and out and and you can just you can visually see straight away that there's a problem. So we use the EID tags we do have an auto draft but we basically use it for weights particularly for our feedlot we run through the cross spread weathers and our merino weathers now they all go through the feedlots so we weigh the use at sorry the lambs at marking and get a sorry at weaning and we get a growth rate for them pretty much through the time that the the weathers are on the place and also the u-lands that's also become quite important so we've been splitting our mobs into fats and skinnies and then they run out across the improved pastures but obviously the skinnier ones get the better pastures so that helps us and later on down the track if we're looking to sell something we'll obviously sell off the bottom ones or the top ones depending on what the markets are doing so it just gives us that flexibility to really target what we're doing and we've found it really beneficial for the u-lands as well because you've got the younger ones that are or younger or not putting on as much weight so you can really push them by looking at their average daily gains and that sort of thing we also use it for preg scanning so as Nathan was saying making sure you get rid of those passengers our user joined for five weeks and anything that's dried goes off the place then and anything that doesn't rear a lamb as we've been trying to we've bought a little bit more property so we've been trying to build up our stocking numbers so we've been keeping them on for a year but we'll make sure that we've got the information recorded there so if they come through again we know that they're twice haven't read so they're off the place as well and we're also looking at doing early and late early and late preg scanning this year so we've got the use in containment if we've got them if we'd rather than having to separate and have 50 million different mobs if we've got the information in the EID tag we'll know that earlys and late will be able to let the earlys out of containment a little bit earlier three weeks earlier and that will be able we'll be able to split them up that way and so we just do that with we use cousins Josh just puts the machine on the preg scanning machine and it just all does it really simply you just have to make sure that you got tags in everything so if there's one missing it stuffs him up a lot so you've got to be a bit careful about that we use it for fleece weighing we've developed a video with sheep connect which is up on the web so you can look at that but yeah we use that for splitting up you hoggots so putting them into either the crossbred mob or the merino mob or the culls so they get put into those respected mobs based on the fleece character and the sheep classing and then on the weight and then the fleece weight so that all sort of gets put together into a bit of an index that we use to separate them into our hoggots we don't use that information the fleece weight anymore but we probably should going further something that I think we need to look out with keeping some older use to keep building up our block numbers and then status so yeah as I said if they're twins or singles or if they've not reared a lamb then we put that all all in there as well so we've got quite a bit of information in there we use true test XR and also the panel reader we when we had the ramstud we had a computer based program that sat in my laptop and then we bought the auto draft and I tried to get them all to speak to each other had mobs of sheep in the yards and I couldn't get anything to speak to each other on the phone and it was just horrible pressure from dad going come on we've got to get this happening so we just canned all of that and just went to the whole shebang with the same company I think for us that was important he just one phone call to one person and they fix it all up so we've got the number for James Ellis and for true test in the box in the case and anybody can pick up a phone call and call them and it's really really helpful because quite often it's such a little thing that you just can't work out and they would just go oh you just have to push this button or you know put this this input in there and it will work so yeah we've found it to be really beneficial I've got a little video this is weighing our weather lands the other day so we've got a three-way draft my husband made the v-race out the back here it's a little bit short I think it needs to be a two-sheet long rather than the one but yeah this is just that animal runs in picks up the tag and then it's weighing based on on flicking it out which way the weight goes so this was just to take off the bottoms from our weather lands that went off on the truck the other day but yeah we chose this it's an electronic system it runs off a little 12 volt battery up the top there we chose it because it's light we can move it in and out that's probably a problem with our system that we have to move it in and out a lot but I can do it by myself and the other thing about the battery is that it's really really quiet so you've got no air guns going off and all the rest of it you just have to remember to charge the battery which is a bit of a problem sometimes yeah but yeah it's a one-person job it used to be a two-person job to to draft the sheep but I can do it by myself the sheep get used to it they run in and out really easily and yeah it's actually a very stressless job to do so yeah we really like it and the next thing that we bought is the combi clamp so we did this with we joined one of Chris's livestock enterprise courses and got the money for the agtech rebate and purchased a combi clamp I'll just show it this is the use running through we was vaccinating and drenching used into the feedlot yesterday so my husband that's to be standing on there we're weighing them so we don't have a stick reader there at the moment but we in the past we have put a stick reader on it with lamps yeah so we made sure that we got on with scales on it so we can do both practices at the same time and yeah everything else is just in that we made sure also that we got the the tray that holds everything we had one in the past in a different business and we didn't get any of that stuff but yeah it was really important to do it yeah so we find it that it's really easy it does take two people to do it because you have to stand on the thing to make it work so you sort of maybe if I'm out the back or bringing another mob of sheep up you have to sort of hop off and race up and follow the sheep up so it's easier having two people but yesterday he did do it for a little bit just with the good the dogs sitting at the back there for a bit without me yeah we can sort of do we did about 500 in two hours yesterday so yeah they flick through reasonably quickly we love using it for weaning so the use and the lambs just come up in one pass and that works really well it takes a little bit longer but it's not stressful you don't have lambs getting crushed in the race or anything like that and we get growth rates on the lambs really easily so yeah that works really really well it is a bit bulky and heavy so it does take us sort of 10 to 15 minutes to put in with the waybars and everything so again that's a problem something that we need to look to incorporate everything into our yards when we improve our yards so yeah but it is it is again a very easy machine to use and there's no technology with it it's just standing hopping on hopping off so yeah a really good one we we really like it as well one other thing that we use in terms of agtech is agriweb so a computer based and phone based sort of notebook and we have had that since Toby and I have been managing the business for the last two or three years and we really love it like my dad and Toby and I we're all running the farm so we're all inputting bits and pieces and you get an idea of where everything is I'm hopeless with numbers as well so it's at the tip of my on my phone looking at the livestock numbers paddock hectares all the rest of it this is just a map of our farm so you've got the all the paddocks these green bits are sort of the vegetation areas and we've got all our pipelines so we drive along and map up the pipeline so we know and then if somebody else comes on to the place they know one other thing I found the other day is baits we've done fox baiting and now everybody knows where the fox baits are dad used to do it and we had no idea where anything was it was a bit scary so that's a really beneficial thing that we've used I just took a photo of it and sent it to everybody and just said this is where the fox baits are yeah really really good really easy to use once you work out how to use it just basically yeah flicking things where it needs to go we also use it for weed management so a lot of the time if we're riding through the paddock we'll find we've got silver leaf nightshade in a lot of little spots just little isolated plants if you're riding through the paddock you just stop you map it on right right where you are and you know that either you can come back and find it or someone else can come back and find it when they're spraying the other really beneficial thing that I use it for is treatment so when you're right filling out your nvd you've got you can just flick on to the mob look through and find exactly when you drenched or vaccinated or treated those animals and with the date so you've got all that information there and shearing you can work out exactly when the date was put it all on there it's yeah very very easy yeah tool to use and we've got it everywhere there are a lot more reports and things that you can do in it that I haven't really played with too much yet but yeah I have just started using it for a little bit of pasture management but yeah haven't delved into that too much at the moment we're still on just a very basic plan this is basically all we use it for there's other bits and pieces that you can use it for but we haven't really found any benefit in that for us as our business oh sorry one other bit um before I started with AgriWeb there's also a program called Nature Maps on just on the web it's an essay based program that you can go in and you can do a lot of measuring if you can find your property I've also found that really beneficial so it brings up yeah all the different cadastral information and that's really beneficial too and one other thing in terms of pasture management so we sow yeah 150 hectares of sort of forage pastures with cereals and rye grasses and clovers trying to extend our grazing year so we have early mid and late varieties all in one and I use a plate meter so I did a pasture principles course and that plate meter has been fantastic I go out every Monday do 10 or 15 plonks in every one of our pastures and then that helps me set up the rotations for the you know a week or two weeks and gives me a good idea about yeah how much how many kilos are in there in the pasture so that's another really beneficial tool as well it sort of cost about 800 bucks I think but yeah the amount that I use it and just so that you know definitely what how many kilos you've got in front of you rather than just guessing I'm not very good at guessing so one other thing we've got is just this we're looking at using the SIBO labs which is a remote sensing to tell you how many kilos of pasture you've got so we're doing that through big so that'll be interesting to see how that goes rather than having to plonk it go out there and plonk it two other things that we use in our business zero and figured fantastic budgeting and financial tools I wouldn't be able to run our business without it and it was kind of the handover of dad handing over to me and I just yeah took it and ran with it it was a really easy handover and I use it for tracking livestock and yeah really once once you get your head around it it probably takes three months of really using it flat out to get your head around it but now that I've got my head around it it's fantastic I absolutely love it and these are just a couple of ideas that we really want to get involved with in the future water monitoring big water problems out our way with all of our dams drying up and big reticulation systems are getting some flow meters and water monitoring information would be really beneficial flock profiling for our sheep flock we're about to start buying rams again so being able to benchmark where we're at and improving that sheep yards shearing shed all on the wish list obviously we're running sort of 50 year old yards and 100 200 year old shearing shed at the moment virtual fencing will be a game changer for our business when that all comes in for sheep um yeah it'll be fantastic I cannot wait for that to happen we'll be able to just yeah monitor our grazing particularly throughout our hills and walk over weighing so my husband wants all the information from the weathers all the time but when you bring them into the yards it obviously yeah takes a couple of kilos off each time so that would be really beneficial thank you