But a new ultra-high-frequency RFID monitoring system is taking the guesswork out of pen-checking for feedlot operators and potentially one day, for cow-calf operations.

“Currently today, we are 100 per cent at the mercy of our pen-checkers’ ability to visually see that sick animal,” said Simon Cobban, manager of feedlot solutions at UFA. “They have no tools today to help them, other than visually identifying the sick animals — and sometimes that’s a little like trying to find Waldo in a pen.

“Whenever you have to rely on something that’s 100 per cent a human effort, any tool that you can give them to assist them and make their job easier and more effective is absolutely worth looking at.”

UFA recently acquired the Canadian rights to HerdWhistle, developed by Calgary tech company A4 Systems. It monitors the behaviour of individual animals — such as how often they go to a feed bunk or waterer, and how long they stay. The frequency and duration of visits allow the system to establish a baseline for ‘normal’ behaviour for each animal. As soon as an animal falls outside the range of normal behaviour, it’s flagged by the system and pulled for further investigation.

“One thing we know for sure is that as an animal gets sick, it has a behavioural change,” said Cobban. “Once you’ve established the normal behaviour for that animal — and that happens very quickly — we can then identify when that behaviour changes. Through that behavioural change, we can now identify animals that would have a higher probability of being sick.”

And the earlier you can detect that sick animal and pull it for treatment, the better the prognosis. The developers of HerdWhistle say it is able to detect illness three to five days (and in some cases, up to seven days) before there are visible signs.

“The key to it is early detection and early treatment. It makes for faster recovery and healthier animals,” said Cobban. “Now we’re treating those animals that much sooner, and we can decrease mortality by up to 25 per cent and morbidity, treatment rates, and transmissibility in the pen as well. As a result, we’re looking at potentially lower treatment rates over time.”

It also means that sick animals are less likely to slip through the cracks due to human error or a shortage of quality labour, he added.

“Rather than your pen-checkers trying to identify those sick animals, now they just have to go out and find them,” he said. “Now instead of them being overwhelmed because they’ve got the whole entire feedlot to look at, they can target the problem animals and just pull from the list they were given.”

That also helps with inventory control. If an animal loses its tag or ends up in the wrong pen, the system will recognize that its behaviour has changed — regardless of the reason — and flag it for followup.

“We can almost give you 100 per cent inventory control,” said Cobban. “You’ll know exactly where every animal is at any point in time, and if an animal disappears for whatever reason, it will be flagged, and you can go and search for that animal.”

Traceability is also improved within the operation.

“We can trace the movements of that animal, all feed additives and medications throughout the feedlot.”

Other lower-frequency RFID systems in use today offer some of these features, but tend not to be as effective or efficient as HerdWhistle’s ultra-high-frequency system, said Cobban.

“With that technology, you can’t read two tags side by side, for example, and the read ranges on them is very poor,” he said. “The higher the frequency, the better the technology can get for reading the tags. Your read range gets further out and you can read more than one tag at the same time.

“If you put it at the feed bunk where there’s 100 head of cattle, you can read all 100 head at the same time.”

The HerdWhistle hardware and algorithms are still being refined by the developers and as such, the system is not yet installed in any feedlots. But Cobban said he believes feedlot operators and even cow-calf operations will see the benefit of it.

“In theory, it will absolutely work, and in practice, we’ve seen that it works,” he said. “So now we’re taking it out into a much larger scale to prove the concept out.”

UFA is currently offering financing for the hardware and will waive the monthly system fees for the first three customers.

“We’re looking to get those first three on board and signed up and using the system so that we can further refine it,” he said. “For the first three guys in, it’s not going to cost them much to do it.”

The post Algorithms getting ready to saddle up at feedlots appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Provincial regulations were recently amended so radio frequency identification tags are now an approved method of identifying cattle in addition to branding. The change comes in the wake of a successful pilot project that concluded at the end of June.

“When I started with the co-op and in our own operation (Schooten and Sons) where we feed quite a few cattle, the only cattle we were mandated to brand were the feeder association cattle,” said Shane Schooten, chairman of the Picture Butte Feeder Co-operative (PBFC).

“In our own operation, where we promote employee safety, animal welfare and cattle comfort, using RFID as the identifier moved us closer to those goals.”

Schooten and the PBFC approached Alberta Agriculture and Forestry about conducting a pilot project to look at other options to identify feeder association cattle.

“We needed another option without having to physically brand these cattle and yet maintain the integrity of the government’s Feeder Association Loan Guarantee Program and to keep the PBFC’s investment secure,” Schooten said.

All cattle are required by law to have a Canadian Cattle Identification Agency approved button tag, which is a low frequency RFID tag.

For the first trial of the project, approximately 5,000 head were tracked by both brand and RFID tag, with the brand used as a control or backstop. PBFC supervisor Broek Murray verified the tag information collected by the feedyard on the animal’s arrival at their facility. That verified information was then submitted to the office by Murray. From there, PBFC administrator Dick Haney’s team drafted the loan documentation using the tag numbers as security.

The team conducted a couple more trials after the first one was complete. Schooten said that they had a slippage rate on tag read of less than one per cent and overall, the verification process was pretty seamless.

“Data collection at the feedlot is happening already,” said Schooten. “Every feedlot over 1,000 head is supposed to be reporting their RFID tags. We figured most feedlots should have the technology and capability to collect these tags already, so we weren’t going to create an issue for them.”

“The RFID tag numbers are what we use as collateral to secure our loans,” added Haney. “We had to satisfy both ourselves and the ministry with this project that we had a system that we were quite confident was reliable and sustainable.”

There has been a major uptake by the co-op’s membership due to the pilot project, with approximately 35 to 40 per cent of the cattle being traced using RFID tags instead of branding.

The regulatory change will benefit feeder associations, said Schooten.

“If branding is no longer a requirement to be part of a feeder co-op, feeder associations will gain business and new clients. In my opinion, it makes record-keeping a little easier. We’re moving with the times. We’re using technology versus physical attributes.”

Schooten said he considers both branding and RFID as legitimate identification tools, but he wants other options for producers who are trying to enhance their safety protocols in their operations and humane management of their cattle.

“One of the things we all have to be cognisant of is that the end-user of our product is the consumer,” added Haney. “The consumer is very mindful these days about animal and employee welfare, so the use of RFID as the identifier of cattle is a tremendous opportunity for feeder associations and the ministry to react and respond to some of those concerns.”

The post Co-op’s pilot paves the way for identifying feeders with RFID tags appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The 840 tag is an electronic ear tag of either half-duplex or full-duplex frequency. It bears an official identification number following the ISO 11784 standard, which includes the code of the country where the indicator was issued following the ISO 3166-1 numeric standard.

These tags have been recognized as equivalent to Canadian-approved tags by Agriculture Canada.

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“We had to make BIXS more user friendly,” said Larry Thomas. “It had to be compact, fast and on a different platform, and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association needed to own it outright.”

A reliable and easy-to-use database to capture data from pasture to packing plant is considered by many to be critical to the future success of the Canadian beef sector, and was one of the key recommendations of the Straw Man Beef Industry Initiative task force.

“It is imperative that the common repository be operational, efficient and sustainable,” the task force said in its December report Building a Stronger Canadian Beef Industry.

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FAQs on BIXS 2.0

The report recommended the creators of the system be given “until March 2014 to demonstrate that this database and service offering will meet the requirements of the industry.”

The launch of BIXS 2.0 was quietly announced March 28, and Thomas said it is performing well.

The database logs data linked to RFID tags and can include birth dates, premise ID (if the producer chooses to enter it), weight at arrival of a feedlot and departure, slaughter date, hot carcass weight, and grading information. In some cases, “tens of thousands of pieces of information” are uploaded at a time, said Thomas. BIXS 1.0 had trouble handling such volumes. That also prevented many producers who didn’t have high-speed Internet access from using the system.

“That (old) process sometimes would take hours or days,” he said. “In our case (with BIXS 2.0), we’ve seen 3,000 or 4,000 head come over in 15 seconds.”

Old system discontinued

After a lengthy review, the old system was put on hiatus in December 2013.

“We got it to the point where we were getting carcass data to producers linked to that CCIA tag ID,” said Thomas. “But it wasn’t fulfilling what we hoped it would, and we weren’t getting the uptake that we needed.”

Arcurve, a software company from Calgary, was hired to build the new version and did testing with some producers prior to the March 28 soft launch.

The program is free and all of the old BIXS 1.0 accounts have been moved to the new system, which can be accessed by going to www.bixs.cattle.ca. First-time users should email info@bixs2.ca for sign-up information.

There is currently data from about 460,000 animals in the BIXS 2.0 system submitted by cow-calf producers and feedlots, and about 2.8 million detailed carcass records, provided by Cargill’s High River and Guelph plants as well as the JBS plant in Brooks.

The latter contains data such as rib-eye marbling area, carcass score, quality grade, fat thickness, and hot carcass weight.

“This is information that a lot of cow-calf producers have never seen on their animal,” said Thomas.

That data holds the promise of allowing producers to select genetics and make changes in their management to produce higher-value cattle — although getting a premium is still uncharted territory.

“BIXS enables better communication between the cow-calf, feedlot, packing and distribution sectors on an individual animal basis and offers a way for producers to develop business relationships,” states the BIXS website.

“As those business relationships form, premiums may indeed come. The Sourcer Utility query function built into BIXS will spur the development of these business relationships and may well pave the way to premiums being paid for animals meeting a certain spec BIXS member feedlots, buyers, packer/processors and distributors are seeking.”

The system could also connect producers with buyers of premium beef, said Thomas.

“If I’m a boutique retailer and I’m looking for something specific, how can I use BIXS to get in touch with those who produce it?” he said.

“In other words, there’s never really been anything in the industry on a national basis anywhere, that I know of, that would enable blind query of a database in a confidential manner, that would enable me to link up with suppliers for stuff I actually need,” said Thomas.

BIXS 2.0 works on most browsers. The project team is currently making BIXS 2.0 applications for iPhone, iPad and mobile Android systems.

The post Second version of beef database launched appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Traceability is always a concern for the livestock industry, so effective April 1, the RFID tag is the only legal tag for bison,” said Terry Kremeniuk, executive director of the Canadian Bison Association.

The move should come as no surprise to bison producers, he said.

“We made the decision about eight years ago to move away from dangle tags, and we believe that most dangle tags have gone through the system,” said Kremeniuk.

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The switch was made at the request of “those involved in the industry,” and just makes sense now that RFID tags have become the standard, he said.

“It creates a hassle if you don’t stick to the one (system).”

While bison being sold to another producer or moved off from their farm of origin will need an RFID tag, those headed for the slaughterhouse can keep their old tags.

“It’s my understanding that CCIA and the slaughter facility will work with you as long as you have a tag in hand,” said Kremeniuk.

The post Bison producers need to make the switch to RFID tags as of April 1 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.