Browsing by Subject "EID korvamerkki"

The 1997 BSE crisis (mad cow disease) gave impetus to improve cattle identification to be able to trace cattle from birth to death. Compared to a traditional ear tag, the electronic ear tag speeds up the identi-fication of a single animal and also increases the reliability of identification. This technology makes it theoretically possible to individually identify all of the cattle inside the EU. The objective of this study was to examine the utilisation of electronic identification (EID) in Finland on different types of farms. The observation objects were cattle farms that used electronic ear tags. The objective was to find out the farms’ utilisation of EID, its function, and also farmers’ views of EID. The farms were compared by the size of the herd quarters, the form of operations and farm types. The study was done by an internet survey. The population was recruited from the customer register of Faba co-operative. The survey was sent to 2511 farms and 266 responses were received. The top three areas with the highest response rates were in Northern Savo, Northern Ostrobothnia and Southern Ostroboth-nia. 67 % of the responded farms used EID in their farms. The most popular EID assisted jobs on farms were heat detection, feeding kiosks and with milking robot. There was a difference in the utilisation of EID between all the measured variables. The farms used different kinds of EID equipment with differ-ent identification styles. The most popular ways to identify cattle were electronic ear tags and collar sensors. The farms were unanimous in their view that the electronic ear tags should be mandatory for all the cattle in Finland. The bigger the farm, the more important they felt that EID was. Dairy farms and fusion farms considered EID more important than did other production sectors or farm types.