ORMISTON, Sask. – Four yearling heifers moved slowly up a chute past a panel reader during an RFID tag traceability demonstration at a community pasture.
But the reader recorded only three. That was a “fairly consistent” finding among cattle taken in at four pastures, said Ross Macdonald, a livestock specialist with Agriculture Canada.
“There seems to be an inconsistency in tag readability.”
The Agriculture Canada project was designed to see how radio frequency identification technology works in the community pasture system.
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This spring, the project was set up in four Agri-Environment Services Branch pastures, formerly known as PFRA pastures, at Bitter Lake, Excel and Wolverine pastures, all in Saskatchewan. The fourth pasture was at the Ellice-Archie, Man., pasture.
During the take in of cattle, managers counted 2, 613 head. The wand reader counted 1,513 head and the panel reader counted 2,186.
On one truck, 40 cow-calf pairs came off the truck, but the reader counted 32 cows and 39 calves.
“What use is that?” said Macdonald, who added that part of the project was to identify challenges with the technology and examine whether existing technology is ready for the national mandatory traceability program in 2011.
“If anything, it causes confusion.” Macdonald said the goal was to test the equipment to see if mandatory traceability can be achieved on sites with commingled cattle.
“It appears this technology isn’t up to stuff for what we want to do.”
Macdonald said they also identified other challenges:
• limited wand reader range;
• safety concerns for technicians when using a wand reader in alleyways and at gates;
• poor weather made it difficult to protect the electronic equipment;
• a person other than existing pasture staff was needed to look after the electronic equipment during the take in process, and then download the information onto a computer;
• cattle became wedged in panel readers mounted in chutes;
• a decrease in read percentage when calves moved through the system three abreast;
• calves often turned around in the chute;
• a technician with the ability to judge cattle movement is needed for livestock and technician safety. Macdonald also said they used the
equipment only on modestly busy intake days and doesn’t know how much the equipment would slow down handling on busy days.
“If mandatory traceability is going to be in place, these are the challenges,” he said.
He hopes the results will give a better understanding of the problems that the livestock industry could face when traceability becomes mandatory next year.
The project will be run again during livestock take out at the pastures and the results will be released this winter.
