 Hi this is Michael Wurst from Rural Solutions SA and we're here today to film the Redmeaton Wall Focus Farm of Greg, Jane and Sam Kellock here at Farrell Flat in the mid north of South Australia. And today the video will explore the livestock technologies that they're using here on the Focus Farm and also looking at the management decisions that they've made and also looking at some of the benefits with using all that technology. For our sheep enterprise we're a pulmarino self-replacing and the aim of it is to produce an ethical animal so it's unmills and we're producing a dual-purpose animal and very much focused on the wall as well as the meat. We were asked to be a focus farm and made the decision that we would. We've always been very open to new technologies and always open to learning new things and networking with producers. We like to share what we do and I think we're reasonable communicators. One of our other key goals is to ensure that we've got good outcomes for reproduction so we've made a decision to go down a bit more precision management so to do that you have to have some technologies to make that much simpler for you. So in 2014 we made the decision to go into EIDs and we put EIDs in all our use our hogots and our lambs. That has really helped us to be able to give us some information to ensure that we're meeting our reproductive targets. The EIDs is only a small part of it. It's what you do with the data management and how you use that data to give you good outcomes is the most important part. Some examples of some technology that we use on our farm that have really helped our business have been fleece testing. We get cousin's marina services to come in and use the OFTA and that gives us the full range of marina tests. So the OFTA has the ability to measure a variety of traits. It's measured the micron so the mean is the mean of all the fibres measured so it's 17.8 micron. Coefficient of variation your CV 16.3 the standard deviations you've got comfort factor which was a hundred percent. You've got the number of fibres measured which is 2694 fibres were measured from that slide so quite a significant number to get that mean figure. We have the length as Joan's spoken about it's quite important for them their operation so that was 65 millimetres. The OFTA also provides us with a histogram so we've got the histogram of that sample. And one of the really important ones for us is staple length because we share six monthly so it's really incredibly important that we have animals that will grow a long staple so that's a vital part of our business. It also gives us a staple profile which is over here so it shows us if there's been any changes predominantly in nutrition or it could be an animal health that has caused any stress to the animal or it could actually be going from a poor pastor to a good pastor. In this example that's quite a stable obviously staple profile but you can get some quite big jumps or dips and that's obviously where you'd get a break in your wall. Another profit driver is fleece weight. Normally when we are fleece testing got someone here shearing and we scan the tag that then prints out a barcode which I then put on the table. When the rouse about picks the fleece up I match the barcode to whatever stand it is and I then scan the barcode which gives us a reading the rouse is put the fleece on the scales and then that gives us a fleece weight. Another key component for us is preg scanning. We have been doing that for a long time and it was one of the key reasons why we went to EIDs because we had use walking around with lots of ear tags so the decision was made that we would go to EIDs to ensure that we were using that data in a more efficient way. We can then manage our twins and single use differentially so for us the most critical component of of your lambing is new nutrition. So to be able to manage your twin news in a way where they're getting the best nutrition is vitally important for our reproduction. So one of the main pieces of machinery I suppose that we've purchased a long time ago was a combi clamp. We've adapted that a little bit to suit our needs but it's very good performing other operations in drenching and vaccinating and crutching. So Greg's weighing the lamb and condition scoring and he'll record that in the scale head and the the tag's been scanned and automatically gone into the scale head so we know which animal it is. That's recorded and then we can let it go. We've just found it a very good unit. It's not the biggest and the best but it's it works very well. We use a few programs at the moment to manage our EIDs and get the information and collect and keep the information. We use stock book and then on a mob based we use agri-web which also we're using to collect our cropping information so all our paddock data. We also use ram select which keeps record of our genetic information for rams as well as it records our DNA testing that we've done from our flock from our u-hoggots which also stores all of that information. With that we can easily see genetic change and the differences that we're having with the choices that we make. Another key tool that we use is a moisture probe and weather station that tells us moisture levels up to a metre deep in the ground and helps us make some really good decisions in for pasture management as well as cropping around fertilizer and those sorts of things. You know for us when we're making decisions about technologies that has to be good for our profitability good for our business but also good for our people so we need to ensure that we're looking after our people so just think new yards will make that much better. We had a look at the auto drafter today which was one auto drafter there's a lot on the market. One of the other items that we're looking at is walk over Wayne in the lamb feedlot and that's certainly an area we think is better for the animal as well as certainly take the pressure off the people as well. So I've done a bit of investigation on some pasture monitoring certainly when we've put drones up over the property where you think you've got really good pasture cover when you put a drone up you realise that your bare ground is a lot more than anticipators. I think there are some really great new technologies out in that space and pasture monitoring is is a huge part of that nutritional benefit for the animal so. I'd like to thank Greg and Jane for their support as being a focus farm and also their input into this video.