 from Rural Solutions SA and we're here today to video the red meat and wool growth program focus farm of McPiggory which is operated by the McMahon family and Dwayne Simon is the the manager of the Broadacre livestock enterprise. Here at McPiggory they've been focusing on EID for individual animal management but they've also now looking at tank monitoring to monitor their water. We're running between six and a half and eight and a half thousand years predominantly self-replacing and then we do breed first-crossed use for the narrowcourt first-cross viewland sale as well. We're always working on fertility to try and increase our landing rates and land survival because it's the biggest profit driver but still maintain our wall quality and wall cut. Our walls we average about 19 to 20 micron. We shear every six months just for management for grass seeds through the summer and and we're hitting that better tensile strength which is allowing us to sell our wall better when it when it is tougher at the moment for sure. Our sheep enterprise is basically separated from our cropping enterprise so it's run on all different country. We sow vetch and barley for fodder to get like to try and fill that early feed gap in autumn. So then we've got perennial pastures of loosen and veltgrass as well. So in the past we did fair bit of clay spreading around here on some lighter country just to try and prove the soil type. It was initially some of us were cropping to try and prove paddocks but it sort of worked out really well for establishing loosen on sand and then stopping erosion and all that. That veltgrass on our real non-wetting sort of sand so it's probably under utilized the veltgrass like probably the last five years. We've been ramping up the fertilizer and trying to get as much as we can out of that least performing country. That veltgrass really helps feed, fill that autumn feed gap. Fence most blocks into sort of 40 hectare so 100 odd acre paddocks. Then we just like rotational grays and keep sheep moving around. Then we sort of know how much feed we've got in front of us. We can forecast if we're going to keep sheep, sell sheep. We're right in the pan probably 10 years ago but just trying to get that gross margin per paddock per hectare so we can work out our DSEs. Then we know we're out so we can just work out how much we've spent per hectare, how much our return is and just get better at budgeting. Had EIDs we've been sort of chipping away putting in the use as as lambs. So in these lambs here we've got the EID tag with the microchipping side and then just the visual normal tag with a number which correlates with the electronics hip so they lose one or the other. You still haven't lost that information that you've collected on the animal. So we've got the auto drafter here with Regi EID tags and so we use this for if we've got twins and singles still mixed together we can redraft them on twins and singles or we can and we use it for weaning so record weaning weights say you've done a joining and you've got different size or you've got even crossbreds and marinos together you can have you can draft all that just on the tag information. We're just starting to record and use that maternal data that we're recording from preg testing so that it's a you that's raised a twin when you come around to class you can give her more opportunity because she probably at classing time she'll look like the worst sheep but she's probably your most productive animal. Then same thing when we're classing our U hoggots we'll have that weaning weight we'll have that it was born a twin so that we can use that data to give that sheep its opportunity because it might not be as big as the big single but and it could have been a twin out of a maiden U which is just try and use that data and use that EID technology to collect that data simply or an easier and then we can call on it. We've been pre-testing for 15 years I think. Initially we just wet dried but as we've been going and going probably the last 10 years we've twin singled and then tried to improve the nutrition on them twin bearing use to make sure we can increase that lamb birth weight so that we can have better survival. We lamb down our twins in sort of mobs of a hundred and then singles up to 250. I'm probably going to look at my system going forward and separate my twins and singles pre-lamming get the nutrition right and then probably get a hundred twin singles and a hundred twins and put them in each mob just for paddocks and all that sort of stuff but you're not getting the lambs all dropping on the one day like you do a twin bearing mob just too many sheep drop on one day. As long as you're recorded at pre-testing it's going to have a twin you can still justify that you anyway because you never know if they have raised or haven't raised to either. Four years ago with our geographical spread of our properties we're just looking at easier ways to monitor your water to know that you got water security. Our water source here is all ball water so we're very lucky in that sense we don't have to rely on mains or rainfall to fill dams because we wouldn't have any stock at all if we had to. Three years ago I put some observant monitors in so I've got them spread we've got property south of Perilla and then property towards Carunda so I've got monitors on on crucial heels that you know that that property has water and it's and it's not a leak. This is at our Marama farm so this is one of our blocks it's probably from where I live it's about 80 k's so it's handy to have a tank monitor so this is a observant unit so I can look up at any time on my phone and it'll alert me if the tank drops below a certain level as well so yeah just give this water secure on this block and this is the the highest heel on the block so if any tank's going to drop this is going to be the tank that's going to empty so it just sort of gives me a gauge on what the water situation is on this block. Just recently with property it can out when we've put in a Davy system as well. It's not a flow monitor or nothing but it just shows you the tank levels and gauges all that consumption and on my phone I can just go online and just shows me a graph of the flow of water in and out. If it drops so set level you have an alarm and it will tell you that the the water levels drop you're not wasting your time just driving around checking water you know something's wrong here we've got to sort out this situation. We come about involved in the focus farm just to try and share our experiences what worked and what we are working on and just try and help everyone else because it's all new to everyone at the moment and I think if we can all work together to figure out what's what's the easiest way and best way to utilize these technologies it'll help everyone going forward. We'd like to thank Dwayne and the McMahon family for sharing their experiences as part of the focus farm for the Red Meat and Wood Growth Program.