Stefan & Yolandi Erasmus - Livestock management

Breeding
Medication
Weighing
Performance
Inventory check

Commercial lambing

Living in the Karoo, a semi-arid desert with erratic rainfall, makes it challenging to plan long-term stock numbers. As in all desert climates, we make up for it with farming extensively. Our part of the Karoo is on the boundary of two different vegetation types - the Grassland Biome characterised by grasses, and the Nama-Karoo Biome characterised by dwarf shrubs. This allows us to keep cattle and sheep. We farm our livestock of Merino sheep and Bonsmara cattle on a 7739-hectare farm, our carrying capacity is at 2.5 hectares per sheep, and during irrigation we farm 20 ewes per hectare. We adapt the ratio of sheep to cattle depending on where we are in our long term rainfall cycle (always coming out of a drought or heading towards the next one), increasing our stock numbers naturally without needing to buy in, and thereby maintaining our own biosecurity. Therefore, in addition to our animal data, our long-term rainfall records are very important.

Thanks to our indoor lambing facility, referred to as our ‘maternity ward’, we lamb every three months in February, May, August and November. Having four lambing seasons per year is of great benefit to our cash flow. By lambing four times a year, we can also fully utilise the different types of vegetation throughout the year. We are Merino farmers and wool is an important part of our business. We shear our sheep every six months with the average fineness of their wool being just under 19 micron. We lamb our ewes only once a year to make sure that our wool clip stays good enough to export.

Farming in the desert is tricky. iLivestock has helped us to select the animals that do well for us and our management in relatively severe conditions.

Farming in the desert is tricky. iLivestock has helped us to select the animals that do well for us and our management in relatively severe conditions. We need an animal that can utilise our grassy-dwarf shrub rangelands over the hills and on the flats, and be able to survive on very little input from us farmers. However, when it comes to reproduction, a ewe needs to ramp up and produce 1.6 lambs per year on average. This 160% weaning percentage is way above average, compared to conventional extensive programmes. We built the indoor lambing facility eight years ago. This facility played a crucial role in enabling us to move to a prevision reproduction system with increased lambing and weaning percentages.

Data management

We have a simple setup in terms of hardware and software used on the farm. We manually draft our sheep and use Tru-Test load cells instead of bars. And we have been using the eWeigh and iLivestock app for more than five years. Because we lamb four times a year, we are constantly going through the motions from lambing to weaning, moving and selling store lambs or old animals, synchronising ewes again, activating breeding, doing an ultrasound scan, and going into lambing again. That’s probably why we learned how to use iLivestock and eWeigh so quickly, as we use it on a weekly basis. It’s definitely been a game changer to our business.

As data gradually builds up, results start to speak for themselves. We experienced our last drought between 2019 and 2021 during which we sold quite a lot of animals. We were able to let go between 10-15% of our flock per year for three years in a row. Our animal records enabled us to select and sell animals with undesirable performance records or genetics. Despite reducing the number of ewes we farm with, the number of lambs born remained the same! So, your livestock might look pretty. They might be nice and fat, and the body condition score might be perfect, but they're not always your best producing animals.

Accuracy is key when working with breeding stock. Our manual drafter, that is used with iLivestock, ensures that we have accurate data by checking the weights and other animal details (e.g. average daily gain and litter size) when weighing each animal. We use a manual drafting crate system, which is rudimentary, but for us cost-effective because of the data accuracy. We compare today’s weights with the last weight to ensure that we pick up any differences. This is important because sometimes the physical state of a ewe has reached the point where she will not be profitable. We work with speed but make sure that we do it accurately. Whatever you do today should last you for six, seven years into the future, potentially.

Your livestock might look pretty. They might be nice and fat, and the body condition score might be perfect, but they're not always your best producing animals.

That's also what we aim to convey during our practical short courses for South African farmers. You want to make every lamb count. The electronic tag is not going to magically make you sell more animals. If you spend the money to buy electronic tags and systems, you have to put in the time and effort to collect accurate data. Otherwise, you might as well just leave it. Wool and other animal management audits have been rolled out in South Africa, and soon we will not be able to export our wool, if we're not part of a responsible standard or something of the sort. iLivestock makes our audits a paperless and pain-free experience.

Biosecurity

The commercial farming sector in South Africa has a well-developed support network and access to markets. That doesn’t mean we are immune to any external factors. In the event of a biosecurity issue, the international market may choose not to use our product. Traceability is one of the ways in which to address this issue and one of the main reasons we decided to start electronically tagging our animals.

Our animal records on practical iLivestock enables us to trace our animals from birth into the meat value chain, including our animals’ medicine records. Such traceability will become more and more important as the markets expect transparency from farmers in how their food is produced.

Genetic selection

Generational farming can become jeopardised when the narrative becomes: it was good enough for my grandfather, so it’s good enough for me. Our view is to be sustainable long-term, and adapt all new proven technologies going forward. Accordingly, we were the first sheep farmers in South Africa who started using iLivestock in order to replace the written paperwork recorded during each lambing season, which wasn’t very efficient, and to enable quick and data-driven decisions on genetics - ultimately breeding higher producing animals.

We used to sell ewes that missed a mating, but now we know better. Before making any decision, we look at the history. This ewe came up as our most productive ewe we’ve ever had!

Now, with five generations of breeding data at our fingertips, it’s amazing how our productivity increased because we were able to select the right animals. We identified a ewe that lambed ten lambs in three years, which is unheard of for the Merino breed, known to be less fertile than mutton breeds. After mating, she came over the scale, and normally, any ewe that doesn’t get pregnant during the next mating is selected out and sold. However, now before making any decision, we look at the animals’ history on iLivestock. This ewe came up as one of the most fertile ewes we’ve ever had. But due to the load she had been carrying in terms of milk production, she missed one mating. In the past, I would have made a mistake and sold her. My best genetics would have ended up on someone’s plate.

Weight

Farmers might think they need a lot of information to base selection decisions on. But as a matter of fact, we actually try to make it as simple as possible for ourselves. The starting point is having weight information about your animals. First, you need the weight of each lamb at birth, along with the identities of its sire and dam. Second, you need the date of each weight measurement, including the birth date. Third, you need the weight of each lamb at weaning, which indicates its ability to grow independently from its mother. These data points show up as automatically calculated Average Daily Gain values on iLivestock, being one of the most important selection criteria for animal performance. Add to this genetics and animal details such as litter size, and you have powerful data to make selection decisions on.

With our courses we experience first-hand how overwhelming it can be for farmers to get started with an animal data management system, and how concerned they are about the costs involved. That’s the main reason we started to organise our farmer short courses: to demonstrate how these systems are used in practice. Basically, taking the abstract away, and ensuring they are informed before spending money on any hardware or software. We show how easy it is to implement and use for decision making, and how big of a change it makes for a farming business. We always stress the importance of performance and genetic selection in farming with the best animals for your business. Even selecting your best performing animals for just one season can make a significant difference to your bottom line.

Farmers might think they need a lot of information to select their animals. But as a matter of fact, we keep it simple for ourselves. The starting point is having weight information about your animals.

Although it may sound like a cliche, we experience iLivestock as being very user-friendly, designed to be used by farmers. The farmer focused approach is refreshing. The features in the app are really based on farmers’ feedback. We remember when iLivestock was first launched, one of the very first versions, we asked the team to make the buttons on the screen bigger to accommodate farmers who usually work outside with their animals and who are not known for their dainty fingers.

With iLivestock, we started working with a paperless audit system that met all the required criteria by international standards. On the online dashboard we extract reports for these audits as well as for the market when we sell lambs that we’re not keeping for breeding purposes. We use the various iLivestock reports after every lambing season to assess the state of the business and to make important management decisions. We can highly recommend the iLivestock platform to all livestock farming businesses. You can use iLivestock on multiple devices, there are constant improvements to the app, and it's affordable. It’s a game changer for livestock farming.

Wool and other animal management audits have been rolled out in South Africa. Soon we will not be able to export our wool, if we're not part of a responsible standard or something of the sort. iLivestock makes our audits a paperless and pain-free experience.