 Ben Moir is the general manager of research at the Kindenan Group in Western Australia. Ben is an agricultural engineer, Kindenan Group's research manager and editor of Farming Ahead magazine and a member of the GRDC Stored Grain Extension team. Based in Western Australia, Ben comes from a family farm in the New England region of Northern New South Wales. Since completing his engineering studies at the University of Southern Queensland to Wumba, he's worked for Kindenan Group for 20 years. Ben has extensive experience in reviewing and communicating a wide range of innovations and technologies, including in the livestock agtech field. Ben has conducted a review of a wide range of commercially available sheep handlers and will explain his findings here today. He'll also talk about the key things to consider when setting up a new set of sheep or cattle yards. So thank you Ben. Thank you Emily. Fantastic. I've got a pretty good job I have to say. I'm pretty lucky to be able to review a whole heap of gear and that can be anything from mobile phones to sheep handlers to harvesters. So if there's anything else you want to chat to me about, I'll talk happy to talk about that as well. If you aren't familiar with Kindenan Group or what we do, you might have heard of Choice Magazine. We're a little bit like Choice Magazine that we do independent reviews of equipment and services and tech. And in the past couple of years, we've had quite a demand from our membership to do a lot of work on sheep handling gear and just have a look what's in the market and put some sheep through it and see how it goes. So we have done three reports in the last few years and focusing on the single animal handling gear and then right through to we also had a look at bulk handlers last year as well. So what I'm going to do is just run through, thanks Joe. What I'm going to do is run through some of the findings from that. But just before I do, I'd just be interested to know who is using a sheep handler on farm at the moment. A few? Oh, it's more than I expected. What do we got? Just yell out the names. What brands? What was that one? I've done the sweep. I don't really need to talk to you, like just get amongst yourselves and have a bit of a yard. All right, so there is a fair few out there. Look, what we did is we got them all into the same set of yards and we put some sheep through them. We worked with, you know, as a lowly engineer. While I might have come off a sheep cattle property in the New England, we wanted guys there that handled sheep every single day. So we did, we got some really good producers on a farm in WA and we put sheep through each of these different handlers. We repeated the test a number of times and ended up with some average times. We also did an evaluation on build quality, mainances of operation and adjustability. So yeah, some of those measures are subjective and they're things that we've come up with as engineers and also had input from producers as to what they thought of each of those different makes and models of handler. Now, you'll see that the bulk handlers aren't in there. I'll talk about them separately later on, but we haven't done this level of testing with those. There are some other handlers that aren't obviously in that list as well. So as I say, we try and keep these things updated, but the second you publish something, it's out of date. That's something we've learned pretty quickly, particularly when we're talking about technology, but even just sheep handlers, you know, there's always makes and models and adjustments and changes that manufacturers are continually making. So yeah, Hecton, we've also got the Dan Derrigan, Perkins, Drenchmaster, etc. from MENZ. So there's a few other makes and models that aren't included. So I'm just going to run through each of the models and just talk about the things we didn't like about each of them. And if you've got one of these, feel free to yell out, I'd love to hear if you've got any comments or suggestions that you think we've missed here, I'd love to hear. So we'll start off with the ClipX. What we liked, provided pretty good access to the sheep. There's an air outlet on that unit for any accessories, auto release when you write the animal. What could be better? Certainly in WA, there's some distribution issues. I can't speak for SA, but probably talk to those that have got them to get a bit of a feel what service and backup is like. And I think that it's an important point to make the service and backup for something that's relatively technical. If you open the bottom of this thing up, there's a huge electronic brain in there that, you know, controls the whole, the controls the whole show. Occasionally, you know, think about where that the environment that's working in, you can have issues from time to time, right? So you need that support and backup. So that's important. And in that same sense, pretty early, it was required some improvement. Again, that's probably a reflection of what we had in WA. And I only say that because we had to get into that brain box, crawling in there with buddy, some screwdrivers in the middle of the yards, it wasn't much fun. So a couple of issues there. And as I mentioned, the initial access to the control box, yeah, I had to actually, we nearly had to enlist a 14 year old kid from down the road, because the only one had arms small enough to get in there. Right, but you know, what's what works well on the ClipEx is the control panel is really well laid out. And it's well labelled. You can see what's going on. You know, toggle switches, and there's a bit of a shift to two toggles with with a lot of these handlers. So keep an eye out for that. Combi Clamp, there's a couple of things here that we particularly liked, and it's already been discussed. I think no one mentioned it earlier. We found this unit particularly quiet. And I think that's a good thing in yards, just keep keeps animals moving that there's not a lot of noise. No power required, obviously. Because so it's actuated by the operator's weight. And in all, it's relatively clever. And it's basic. Good engineering is simple engineering. It's something that's really, that's basically that it works well. The end of the day, probably needs two people, someone to push shape up into you know, into the into the unit. So you don't have to continually walk backwards and forwards. And a couple of the cut sections, I think probably could be better finished off just in terms of the caps are a little bit open, potentially could could cause some injury to operator animal. Combi Clamp owners have covered anything else there that we need? About right? Nods? Yeah. Galea clutch and deck. Anyone? Did anyone have that? Is anyone here with a galea unit? No. All right. Look, in terms of construction, very robust. Gale, lots of lots of components hot dipped. It is pretty simple in its operation. Easy to clean down. So there's a reasonable focus on on cleaning and transporting. So in terms of access, you could definitely get in around the animal. That top cylinder did obstruct the operation or the operator a little bit. It's in a way that that that that top cylinder operates. Really need two people to set it up. Some components a little bit heavy, not that well balanced. And the release isn't automated when tipping back tipping the animal back upright. And I imagine that'd be something that could be probably pretty easily fixed. Peek Hill. There's a couple of Peek Hill owners wasn't there? Yeah, good access. Pretty well built. Easy to do. There's a lot of adjustments on that machine. Do you find that as well? Yeah. We found the ballgate at the back of the handler did sort of allow animals to push through a little bit. So when you're rotating that next animal through the through the handler, it did catch the head every down again. Would that be a fair comment? Yep, couple of nods. Good. Good to know. It's good to good to know that we are. We do get some things right sometimes. Yeah, it looks in all it's pretty clever construction is this this handler. And I think there's been a fair bit of thought going to it. So yeah, good unit. And again, the mobiliser. So we're moving now from the from the individual animal operations. I should just back up one and make one point. Those last three handles, obviously, we're talking about lifting and tipping the animals, you know, so you can actually get access to them. Something like the mobiliser keeps the animal and the combi clan for that matter keeps the animal in that upright position. So you're trying to limit it into as to some of the some of the operations you can perform with some of these handlers. So it really depends what we want to use it for. You know, drenching shape upside down in something like like the the Peek Hill handlers probably not something I'd recommend. Certainly not best practice. So the mobiliser simple to use. Again, quite neat, neat construction. Symmetry controls for so left and right hand controls on this unit. Getting that rear gate to operate. Now it does require some coordination. Josh, our other engineer, he's not not blessed, particularly with coordination, Pearl Josh. So talking about half a day to get that right. There is a mountpile for overhead. Yeah, can get in the way a little bit. But of course, that's all something that's pretty easily adjusted. Well, it's just too small and difficult to get in and out of the yard. So, you know, and what tends to happen is that, you know, discard those wells and put something on it works a bit better. Or, you know, you just bring the front and loader into the yards, if you can get it in there and fork it out. It's probably HD4. Now, strictly speaking, we're talking more about draft here. But I suppose I just wanted to make a point that I mentioned before the toggles, these guys are going to rotary switches, because I think they're a little bit more simple to use. There's a fast wrench mode. There's new radio remote. So you can control the control the handler from down the back. So if you're pushing shape up. I think that one of the points I want to make is that any of these handlers only operate as well as the as the race, the lead up race into them. Okay, absolutely essential. Now all the work that we did with those times that I showed you at the start of the talk has all done with the same lead up race. Okay, so getting that right is essential in making any of these systems work really important. Okay, so just move into the bulk handlers. I'm just conscious of time. So obviously two main runs out there, the pro way, which is available in six or 12 meter, six meters or also available in transportable model. Hydraulic lift. So if you out in the middle of nowhere, like this, this unit set up, typically a hydraulic power pack and a gen set to run that hydraulic power packs required. Relatively simple, well built, well finished, lots of hot dip gal. And of course, you're elevating an entire race full of shape with this unit. This lady here handles, I think it's about 10 or 12,000 shape herself, like just by herself every year with this unit. Hooks it up to the trailer, carts it around, can't speak more highly or loves it. And the reason she did that is because she was handling some pretty big weathers in the race, you know how we get in the race, you know, not a good idea is that one jumps up smashed a draw. She was in hospital for six weeks having a complete draw reconstruction. And so that was the impetus to spend the money on this. The other one is the Murray, built by D engineers again in WA. I think one of the things farmers like me, this is a little bit cheaper, I can't remember the exact price, but but they're not afraid to go ahead and weld stuff on, you know, make adjustments, change things, put an extra tap at the end so you can, you can release the air from either end. Okay, pretty, pretty basic sort of setup. Use the tire to inflate and lift the and lift the sheep in the in the race. There's a couple of cradles as you can see that run the length of the race. If you've got small lambs or sheep off shoes like this, I probably should have had those inserts in because they make that that be a little bit narrower. Lots of mods to this one in the in the lead up so that the there's a you can see it's quite high off the ground. So a lot of a lot of growers will put or produce will put a ramp leading up into the end of this unit and and just to aid the flow. Additional taps and it does require a fair bit of air. You might have seen that first photo. There's a large gas cylinder there that's used as a receiver for the for the compressed air. So the compressors up the paddock somewhere. But yeah, they ended up using a fair bit of air. So I needed a quite large receiver to keep that operating. So that's that's all I had for handlers and we're happy to take more questions down the track. But I thought I'd just move quickly on to sheep yard design and I thought I'd just run through some of the some of the considerations you might want to put into play if you're going to make an investment into into yards. I suppose the first one is just planning design and making sure that you've got the yards in the right spot. Make sure that you've got some decent slopes and decent drainage that's going to tie in with existing infrastructure they might have there. Think about where the prevailing winds come from. Think about where shadows are going to fall in your race etc. If you haven't got it covered. At the end of the day, these are a long term investment. Okay, so it's not like if you buy a dud tractor, you can send it back and buy something else. It's pretty hard to trade yards in. In most cases, you've got to pull them out yourself as well, which can be equally frustrating as putting them in and not getting a good getting a good job in the first place. So spend that money once and I suppose the other thing I wanted to point out is that you can always build them in stages and just think about where your end game is for your yards and that infrastructure and think about the stages you might want to get to to do that. Don't have to make that investment all in one hit. Use quality steel. I've seen some really cheap steel used in yards that's had all the gal blister offered and or hasn't you know, hasn't fared well in the weather. Check section thickness in some places, cheap steel is cheap for a reason. That K-Rail or similar that site form panel is becoming really popular. So I don't know if you've got any locals here that do that, but that's a pretty quick way to put up a set of yards and they normally roll it out and charge you by the meter. And the beauty about that is you can have lengths up to well any lengths you like really. I saw some in WA the other day at 25 meter long strips, you know, no joins. Curves and races, the bugle design still king, but we're seeing a lot of these diamonds now in yards. Just being able to shift sheep from one pin to any other just through the diamonds is a really popular design. Who's installed a set of yards recently? Yeah, does they have a diamond in it? Yep, nearly everyone. So that's one of the, I guess one of the emerging trends. Dual races are popular, vertical bars on the end gate just to assist flow into the race. Undercover, whose yards are undercover? Man, I'll tell you what, once you're working to set undercover yards you don't want to get back out in the sun. It just makes life a lot more simple. There are some issues. Dust can be a problem. So our yards are all undercover at home. We just put down water before we're going to master and then by the time that's sort of settled down a little bit there's just no dust in the yards. Makes life a lot easier. Even if you just consider covering the most used parts of the yard, whether that's the race or the area where you've got the handler, definitely something worth thinking about. Lashes and catches, there's heaps of options now and God, I've seen some crazy designs, but top man let's just double latches. There's, I think, anyone that's got a fancy latch that is easy to open, probably might be easy for sheep to go open too, so they've always got a secondary chain sort of latch there as well. P.A. Gates, I think if you're designing set of yards you just can't have too many of them. They make life so much easier and you're not as buggered by the end of the day when you've done a day's work in the yards. Lots of manufacturers who make the P.A. Gates are also putting in dog flaps in the bottom of those gates, just again dogs aren't as buggered at the end of the day jumping over or crawling under fences and you know we want to look after their legs as well. Power and water, think about location in terms of power and water. You're going to need those things if you're going to put hand air for that matter, if you're going to put handlers in there or pretty much anything that these days you're going to need power on site, whether it's panel rotors, I mean yep sure you can get out the gen set. I've seen a couple of setups that were solar, which are interesting, but the other thing I've just made a point there is we were talking about compressors before and having a large receiver to handle the volume of air required for some handlers. In a lot of cases if you want to put that noisy compressor miles away and you've got power there, a decent length of pipe from that compressor down to the yards will often do the job of the receiver. So there's a reasonable volume of air I suppose stored in that pipe if you like. So that can be a good thing. Think about flooring, high traffic areas, concreted, tow recesses in underneath the race help you get in nice and close if you're bending in over. And think about maybe adding some some concrete to to gravel base in throughout the yards. I think it's about one bag of cement to every three square motors is the general ratio, but jeez it makes the yards easy to clean out. Loading ramps, there is a standard being developed off the basis of these guidelines. Examples, you know this is probably top of the water down here that the pro way set up, but I suppose the point is that there are some standards emerging and if you are going to put loading ramps in out of yards and you make that investment again, refer back to that standard because there's some specifics there that will keep truck drivers safe and just make life a lot easier when you're trying to load sheep or cattle. Installations, you know ultimately we've talked a lot about the design and the construction and the fabrication and all that's really important, but if installation's no good then you waste a lot of money. If you're going to do the yards yourself or you've only got yourself to blame if it's not a good install, do you? But if you're going to get a contractor and a lot of, if you buy a set of yards, a lot of manufacturers will use a contractor to install. I'm just going to have a look at some other work that's done previously before you make the call as to whether you want to use them or use the contractor or use that yard manufacturer. It is a big investment. In a lot of cases now they use some pretty high-end surveying gear to lay out posts. It does make the installation a lot quicker and also a lot more accurate. I thought I'd just touch on cow yards as well. So a couple of interesting designs. This one in New South Wales, again Karen Palmarinas that I've got a fair mention today, but interesting design with a central laneway. In this particular set of yards again all the high usage areas are under cover. So the race is there, the handle, the crush is there, etc. And in the same way that we had the diamond design in sheep yards, this hexagonal yard in the centre which I thought was interesting. A bit of a layout there. Plans gives you a rough idea of the areas involved. So the other part of it is obviously the heart of any yards is the crush. I suppose just a couple of things to run through. There's a few dot points there on safety, just making sure that access is safe for all operators, that you're also not going to scorn yourself if you are in that, back in that vet area. Noise is something we've talked about already in the context of sheep handlers. It's important in crushes as well if you want to be able to have low stress operations through a set of yards. Animal welfare always high on the list. And these views have to stress can be a personal preference. So go and have a look at them, make sure you know how everything works, get comfortable with it. And in some cases, you know, things like latches, head mail actions, it all come down to what you prefer to use. That can be a little bit tricky if you're going to buy some off the field day site. But if you can find one that are out on a set of yards and you can, you know, there are some cattle running through it, you'll get a feel for how well it works. Construction, one of the big issues that I've seen lately is some of the cheaper imported crushes. Qualities lacking, let's just say. Some of the worlds have got inclusions in them, some of the finishers pretty average, some of the hot dip gal is not good quality. To keep an eye out for all these things, I mentioned Josh, the other engineer for Conditing Group bought a crush from a manufacturer, I won't name, but it was imported. And I think he's repaired the head mail five times since he's had it out for 12 months. Not good. So just make sure that the quality materials is where it's supposed to be at. Make sure that, you know, you're comfortable with the build quality. And again, we talked about backup and service and make sure that, you know, if you are going to need parts, you can get a hold of those. All the basic stuff, you know, grease nipples, make sure that servicing is going to be pretty easy. There are a lot of moving parts on a crush, make sure that you can access each of those and service them. And think about future tech, you know, just integration of that tech that you might want to put on the crush. You might want to be upgraded later on to air, there might be kits for that. And also obviously the EID side of things, just make sure that all that can be integrated. That's a whole lot of information I'm just throwing at you there in a short amount of time. If you aren't a Conditing Group member and you want to sign up, there's a discount code there. I just ranked through the office because I couldn't make it work. But they tell me that will give you, they're on to it. They tell me that will give you 20% off. So jot that down if you aren't a member. But yeah, I'll have you take any questions from Paul. Just after any tips for the lead-ups, to your handlers? Yeah, for sure. So the lead-ups curves the whole way, try and keep everything curved. In fact, some of the manufacturers of the handlers also supply lead-up races and some will go through a full 180 degrees, which is full curve. Again, blind panels on the outer just so that you can, animals will continue to follow that through. Hot bars if you like them. Some like the peak hill unit comes with a straight race but it's got hot bars and their weight actuator. So as the animal comes on that they pop out. I think the main thing is just keeping it blind and curved so that animals will continue to follow animals. So once you get that flow going, you're away. The other thing, good thing about the 180 degrees that in most cases if you've got the handler sort of here and the race is coming around behind you, you can always walk over and push a few up if there's some help required there. And of course you're always walking up too. So don't put that lead-up race facing downhill. You just won't get flow. Have you had a look on the backup Charlies yet or not? Yep, I have. Yeah, great design. So we saw that I think at a field day in Henty. I reckon it was a couple of years ago. They won one of the awards there for best new release. We haven't put any sheep through it. So COVID has blown a fair hole in our research program and being able to get around and test a lot of things. But it's definitely one of the units would be keen to do some more work on. But look the animals we saw running through it at the field day looked like it was working quite well. So Ben, you haven't mentioned the V-handers or the V-express or the two belts. That's a good point. I haven't. And they're a pretty important part of, you know, a lot of people use those particularly for drenching and whatever they will be, any handwork you've got to do on the animals at all. And they are pretty popular. I suppose one of the things that is important with those is just make sure that you can vary the speed. There's a couple of models out there that where the speed's not variable. And depending on what you're doing that can make life a bit tricky. So, but in all the designs are pretty simple and all pretty much the same. So, but again, yeah, no, they're definitely a contender if you use them and you're happy with them. Sounds good. We've got a need to do the feet on a big door for rams and use. Been batting to find one that's not a huge amount of money. Would you know if you use the arrow or and then do that? We used the arrow in that one of the initial tests we did. I don't think it'll be up to it to be honest. It wasn't a lot of adjustment in that particular unit. It was pretty basic. Again, this is going back three years. That's, you know, unless anything's changed and it may well have changed since then. But, you know, I'm probably not a contender in terms of what else is out there. That's a pretty good question. I mean, there are, I think trying to find a handle that's got plenty of adjustment for size, for a range of sizes is always hard, isn't it? Because they'll be compromises on either design simplicity or, you know, the ease of use. So, but yeah, I mean, you know, depending how big we're going to go, you know, there's handles out there that'll handle rams for shearing. So, you know, there's probably, there's probably one line to look at. You briefly spoke about having yards under cover, which would be ideal. Where's it a planning some new sheet yards and thinking about part cover? Because sometimes the cover itself is more than the yard. So, any lessons learned about part cover with, you know, shade and shadows and stuff? Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yes. I'm making sure that if you, I mentioned that, you know, if you aren't going to cover all the yards, just cover the sections you're working pretty regularly, you're right. If you can trip yourself up with, you know, with sun coming in particular directions and throwing shadows down the race that might pull sheep moving up through it. I think going wider than you probably need, probably should probably take care of that issue. So, just make sure you've got plenty of coverage. But again, it all comes down to cost at the end of the day, too, doesn't it? So, and I suppose the only other great thing about the under cover yards is you can also eliminate them really well as well. So, if you do need to, you know, do some work, you know, into the evening, you know, whatever happens, it's not ideal, but sometimes it happens. You've at least got some lighting there too, even if that's just cleaning out the yards or whatever it might will be, integrating that lighting. And as I mentioned, we've got our sprinklers mounted in the roof, which works pretty well. Nothing gets chewed off or torn apart. That tends to work quite well. But yeah, I suppose in terms of scale, yeah, going out wider to avoid that shadow issue is definitely a good idea. Thank you very much. Can I get you all to join me in thanking Ben?