A note on using electronic identification technology to measure the motivation of sheep to obtain resources at pasture

Electronic animal identification was used to register when sheep moved from one place to another. Non-return gates were used to control the direction of travel of the sheep past electronic identification antennas at the boundary between two areas. A personal computer program was written to control the network of identification readers and to log the ID data together with time stamps of when the IDs were captured. This allowed automatic monitoring of the periods spent by the sheep in the two areas. Forty-nine out of 50 sheep learnt to use the non-return gates when offered a concentrate feed reward during training. The method allowed error-free measurement of sheep movements between paddocks. A race could be added to the non-return gate to increase the level of work required to obtain access to another area. This would allow measurements of the motivation of sheep to obtain pasture resources and thus test the strength of diet preference at pasture.