Impacts of using a precision livestock system targeted approach in mountain sheep flocks
Introduction
Extensively managed mountain livestock systems in North West Europe suffer from climatic and production handicaps (Morgan-Davies et al., 2012), that constrain productivity and economic viability in these areas. As a result, farming in these marginal areas of Europe has often been challenging (MacDonald et al., 2000). Such extensive mountain systems are also characterised by larger sheep flocks or cattle herds, grazing very large areas of poor quality grasslands (Bocquier et al., 2014), with low production levels, efficiency and labour supply (Cabaret et al., 2009), compared to their more intensive counterparts in the European lowlands. The farming population in these areas is also an ageing one, with succession problems and not enough attraction to retain the next generation of farm labour (Madelrieux and Dedieu, 2008).
However, these extensive mountain systems have an important economic and societal role in these areas (Ripoll-Bosch et al., 2012, O’Rourke et al., 2012, Ross et al., 2016), contributing to the rural economy and providing a source of local skilled labour, even if it is very seasonal (Waterhouse, 1996). Mountain systems are also increasingly recognised for their important role in maintaining habitats and species considered to be of high nature conservation value and for the provision of ecosystem services for wider society (Bernùes et al., 2014).
These systems are however often poor in terms of animal performance and welfare. They suffer from poor ewe survival over winter and high lamb mortality (Waterhouse, 1996, Dwyer, 2009), including what is commonly referred as ‘black loss’ – the unaccountable disappearance of lambs from farms (Morgan-Davies et al., 2008a). Management techniques that would help farmers to assess health and welfare of their animals more regularly, in a time-efficient manner, would be beneficial and would potentially help improve survival and sustainability of these types of flocks.
In Europe, mountain systems have not seen the same uptake of mechanisation and innovation as the more intensive areas of agriculture. Livestock farming in more intensive areas has indeed seen a rise in the use of innovations (Riddell and Walker, 2011) in such fields as genetics, breeding, feeding systems, milking devices and, more recently, what is called Precision Livestock Farming.
Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) can be defined as the management of livestock production using the principles and technology of process engineering (Wathes et al., 2008). It can also be described as farming using equipment, data or software which allows the use of information at an individual level for targeting decisions, inputs and treatments more precisely (Morgan-Davies et al., 2015a). It relies on being able to identify an animal individually, most often using a tag or a bolus. This principle has been enabled by Electronic Identification (EID), which was introduced in livestock farming in the early 1980s (Rossing, 1999). In 2004, the European Union rendered it mandatory to uniquely identify all sheep and goats via EID technology (Council Regulation (EC) No 21/2004), further increasing scope for use of these technologies and management systems.
Although PLF historically has been more associated with intensive systems (Wathes et al., 2008, Jago et al., 2013), some authors (e.g. Bocquier et al., 2014; Australian Sheep Industry CRC, 2007) argue that these technologies could equally be beneficial if introduced in more extensive systems, whereby livestock management decisions are traditionally considered at the level of a group of animals rather than individually.
Some of the constraining factors in extensive conditions that could be improved by the use of these technologies encompass labour demand at handling (Bocquier et al., 2014, Morgan-Davies et al., 2015b), the management of reproduction (Bocquier et al., 2014), winter nutrition of pregnant animals, and the management of parasite burden and resistance (Umstatter et al., 2013).
In particular, labour requirements on farm could be rationalised and farm performance improved by implementing such new technologies (Olaizola et al., 2008). The introduction of PLF on livestock farms could impact on labour organisation, as shown by Hostiou et al. (2014). Internationally, the quantification of workloads on livestock farms has been studied and various methods have already been proposed (Dedieu et al., 2000, Dedieu and Servière, 2012, Dieguez et al., 2010). Some studies also highlighted the variation of workload over the year (O’Donovan et al., 2008). However, labour data at farm-task level are often not measured (Sørensen et al., 2005)., or only quantified as a yearly figure (e.g. Nix, 2014), which does not reflect the seasonal variation in task workload.
The nutritional state of sheep can be assessed by body condition scoring (BCS) and live body weight (Behrendt et al., 2011). Body condition scoring provides a reliable measure of fat coverage and thus predicts overall body reserves and is not affected by sheep size or gut-fill at the time of assessment. However, it is subjective and time-consuming (Russel et al., 1969). Weight or weight change are more objective measures to identify if a ewe is maintaining, gaining or losing body mass (Brown et al., 2014), and can be easily collected using EID ear-tags and a compatible weigh-crate.
The growing concern about anthelmintic resistance on sheep farms, as previous worming strategies are increasingly failing and expensive (Garland and Leathwick, 2015), could also be relieved using technology. Targeted Selective Treatment (TST), or targeted worming, is a refugia-based approach to lamb worming, where only a proportion of the animals are treated with anthelmintics, based on their individual weight change (Kenyon et al., 2013). This approach relies on individual identification of animals, which is possible using electronic identification (EID) tags. It has been successfully implemented on lowland farms (Busin et al., 2014, McBean et al., 2016), and its introduction on a mountain farm could present some advantages.
In some areas of Europe, the introduction of mandatory EID in the sheep industry has been controversial (Moxey, 2011, Cappai et al., 2014) and farmers, especially in extensive systems, seem to perceive EID as an additional burden, without necessarily appreciating the benefits that this technology could bring to sheep management (Umstatter et al., 2013). One of the reasons is often a lack of quantification of all the potential benefits, including economic as well as the less quantifiable benefits, such as animal welfare (Morris et al., 2012) or farmer well-being (Hostiou and Fagon, 2012). Eory et al. (2015) also highlighted the lack of information regarding the financial benefits of PLF. The aim of this article is to investigate in more detail the potential, in economic, animal performance and farm labour terms, of introducing a more targeted or precision approach of sheep management into extensive mountain systems.
This paper presents results from a 3 year experiment where a targeted sheep management approach using EID based technology has been implemented and evaluated on an extensive mountain farm.
Section snippets
The research farm
Research was conducted on a mountain research farm in the western Highlands of Scotland, at SRUC's Hill and Mountain Research Centre, Kirkton and Auchtertyre. The farm carries a total of 1300 ewes (Scottish Blackface and Lleyn), and 22 cattle, on 2200 ha of ground. The 1300 ewe flock is composed of two sub-flocks, a commercial flock of 400 ewes and a research flock of 900 ewes, grazing in two separate areas of the farm. Most of the land is permanent grassland of poor quality (mountain grazing
Ewe performance
The unadjusted animal (ewe and lamb) performance data across both systems for the 3 study years are presented in Table 3.
When considering the management system alone as a fixed effect in the model, the LMM showed that, over the 3 years, the system did have a significant effect on mating weights (P=0.018), early pregnancy weights (P=0.004) and 8 weeks post lambing weights of the ewes (P=0.043), with the PLF ewes being heavier than the CON ewes (Table 3). However, when breed, age, scanned lamb
Discussion
This long-term study showed that the implementation a PLF management approach on a mountain sheep farm can be useful, despite the fact that these types of farms handle livestock less frequently than their more intensive lowland farms counterparts (Hargreaves and Hutson, 1997), and operate in harsh environment where the technology may have limitations (Ruiz-Garcia and Lunadei, 2011). Performance of the animals was not affected by the introduction of the technology to aid in decision-making.
Conclusions
This study indicates that it is feasible and beneficial to consider and manage a mountain ewe flock at individual rather than flock or batch level using technology. Segregating large flocks for winter nutrition, reducing the amount of anthelmintic products used on lambs without compromising lamb final weights, reducing labour at handling and providing increasing economic returns were all advantages that such an approach can provide.
A precision livestock farming approach, which incorporates the
Acknowledgments
SRUC and Moredun Research Institute received financial support from Grant-in-Aid from the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS), as part of its Strategic Research Programmes (2011-16 and 2016-21). The authors are also grateful for the useful comments provided by the anonymous referee.
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