Mildura
Enya and I had a very productive couple of days at Mildura this weekend, there are 160 scanners in Australia and 40 were sitting in this shed, the total sheep scanned by these 40 people this year was 6,150,000 averaging about 185,000 each. Some scanners brought their setups along, there was a scanning setup permanently mounted on a trailer that is wheeled into the yards, normal scanning crates with great modifications, our scanning crate which is a bit over the top with the pneumatics operating the auto anti backers, side squeeze , head bails etc. There were some great innovations with small things. Enya had a go scanning with a monocular, which just attaches to a hat and covers one eye.
Normally the net working we get to do at these events is more important than the structured part but the speakers had really great info to share and it was probably the best scanning gathering I’ve been to. The Australian supplier of the only scanning gear all these scanners use has finally pulled the pin on the manufacturer of this scanning gear due to the new gear being of a pretty poor standard, no innovation but sky rocketing prices and poor service backup from the manufacturer. Now Chris at BCF is working on new products but still has all the parts to service and repair our ultrasounds but is getting parts made to his specifications . He can still supply new Oviscan 6’s but also is developing a new line of products with another company.
Enya and I came away from the gathering with a very positive feel about the industry, an interesting thing to learn was a significant number of people that Enya spoke to felt that the supplementary feeding of silage, beans, lupins , hay etc just before scanning made scanning a lot harder as it affected the quality of the image. It’s something to keep in mind so maybe in the last day before you bring the sheep in to empty out just give them enough supplementary feed to get them through the day to empty out a bit more. Anyway thanks for your business and I hope you are starting to accumulate a feed wedge to get you over summer.
- Jeff Southall
