AlPhipps
-My husband and I run a mixed grazing property in the Southern Riverina of NSW.

I’m looking in pneumatic sheep handlers/autodrafters. What do you recommend?

Hi, we are looking into sheep handlers/autodrafter. We are keen to autoweigh and draft as well as to crutch, turn over rams etc. in there. Having it portable between yards is a consideration too.

There seems to be so many (Australian and international) on the market that we are not sure where to start. Any assistance is grealy appreciated.

2124 days ago

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We have seperated the two and have a dedicated weigh/auto drafter and seperate handler that we can also weigh in. The autodrafter is a prattley 3 way slide gate that we bough 2nd hand and have recently fitted a panel reader to for EID tags, it works great for weighing our 2nd x lambs - we use it with a tru-test xr5000 indicator.

The handler is a combi clamp. We love it for its simplicity. No power and no air needed. The sheep run through really well - some feedback we heard on pneumatic ones was that the sheep get scared of all the noise after a few goes through. We were recently looking through some mobs for pink eye and were able to let most of the sheep run straight through and then just put pressure on the ones that we wanted to catch for a better look.

Hopefully the link works for photos, let me know if you have any other questions - happy to discuss further!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/axojTr7ogqkpfYMi7

roger
-Faith, Family and Farming for a bright Future

2109 days ago

Thanks Roger, really helpful. Will have a look at those photos now.
AlPhipps | 2109 days

I have had a Racewell (TePari) sheep handler for about eight years. They are one of the earliest ones made in N.Z. . I believe many of the new ones entering the market are very similiar, but most likely made in China. Some of these suffer from fatigue and electronic issues.

To the chase, I am very happy with my handler, having put through thousands of sheep over the years. I have only had a couple of minor issues, which were quickly resolved by Te Pari's good back up. Great as a handler, or weigh and draft machine. Lambs can be cleaned up easily as the are weighed. The tilt allows for a reasonable crutching position. Multiple operations can be done at once, and there is a drench gun and software that delivers the correct dosage of aminal being weighed.

It is easy to draft up to around 500 -600 an hour. A good lead up race or S Bend helps, especially with a single operater. I find that lambs do not hesitate at all, after being through the machine multiple times. My agent, says it is much faster at weighing and drafting than a dedicated weigher/drafter.

Good luck hunting for one. They will help considerably, especially with crossbreed sheep.

Peter