“Farmer wants a life” a fantastic success
The 2018 Sheep Industry Business Innovation (SIBI) research open day, ‘Farmer wants a life’, was held on 22 March and attended by more than 200 producers, students and industry participants. The event was hosted by the SIBI project, in partnership with the Sheep Alliance of WA.
The day’s format divided attendees into three groups, rotating through a series of workshops and presentations that covered a range of topics, including benchmarking using DNA flock profiling, sheep parasites, sheep energy stores and the value of fat, the importance of meat colouring to consumers, lean meat yield and forward contracts.
Department Director of Livestock Research, Development and Innovation Bruce Mullan said “This was a great day for DPIRD, our partners and the WA sheep industry, with feedback from attendees stating the day’s theme resonated with producers wanting to implement the latest technology, emerging research and management techniques for sheep. The quality of presentations was excellent, and the feel from industry on the day was positive about the future of sheep in WA.”
On-farm technology was a hot topic on the day, with electronic identification tags for sheep, electronic sensors to assist with mothering up ewes and lambs, and software that can report data from on-farm sensing devices all discussed on the day.
Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive, with attendees praising the range of sheep research presented and the organisation of the day itself.