The Value of Information

: Redefining Key Performance Indicators to Support Improvements in Sheep Farming Efficiency

Abstract

Sheep farming has long been associated with low profitability and low operational efficiency compared to other livestock sectors. Evidence to date suggests that this tendency is at least partially attributable to the sector’s low level of performance monitoring, an essential source of information to support accurate and timely management decisions, and that farmers’ reluctance to monitor, in turn, likely stems from the lack of conviction regarding its tangible benefit. To evaluate the economic value of performance monitoring and thereby facilitate its optimal uptake across sheep farms, this thesis investigated three factors that must be considered to make measured information worthwhile in the commercial context: accuracy, impact, and application. The first study (accuracy) examined alternative methods of herbage mass sampling using a rising plate meter and showed that a marginally less accurate protocol can reduce labour time by 51.2% while still providing information of an acceptable quality to support grazing management decisions. The second study (impact) uncovered a previously unknown association between a lamb’s weight at weaning and its subsequent carcass quality and quantified the farm-scale economic benefits of interventions to improve lamb weights at early stages of their lives. Finally, to identify measurable indicators of animal performance that provide the greatest potential benefit to farmers, the third study (application) developed a computational framework to assign economic values to individual metrics as well as their combinations, rank them accordingly and compile actionable benchmarks for effective real-time interventions. Collectively, the findings presented here demonstrate the positive benefit of on-farm monitoring and offer a scientifically robust yet practically implementable method for identifying what to measure and what need not be measured on sheep farms.

Date of Award	2 Dec 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Taro Takahashi (Supervisor) & Michael RF Lee (Supervisor)