WA’s popular Lambing Planner is now available as an app.

WESTERN Australia’s Lambing Planner has gone digital after several reprints to satisfy national and international demand for the popular paper-based tool.

The Lambing Planner is a best practice guide for lambing, developed by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development and Esperance-based farmer group ASHEEP, with help from Meat & Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovation.

Department senior development officer Mandy Curnow said the Lambing Planner had been one of the department’s most popular tools. About 33,000 copies have been distributed over the last decade to sheep producers in Australia, New Zealand, South America, South Africa and Europe.

“It is a simple tool that allows producers to change a lambing date or a joining date to see the impacts of that on other key times in the reproductive year.

“It has had strong uptake as a hand-held, paper-based tool and is now available as an app in both Android and iOS formats,” Ms Curnow said.

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The Lambing Planner calculates other key milestones in the reproductive year based on producer entries and sets out key management operations that make up the breeding cycle, providing information on ewe and ram nutrition, condition score targets at different stages and reproductive management.

The calendar displays the stages of pregnancy or lactation and current recommended activities with more detailed information at the click of a button. The lambing planner app recently won gold at the 2017 TECH Design Awards.

ASHEEP committee member Bob Reed said he appreciated efforts to convert the planner into an app, after the success of the paper-based tool.

“ASHEEP’s original intention with the planner was to sequence a system that made 100 percent lambing outcomes an expectation rather than a surprise.

“Such outcomes are now becoming a reality for many Esperance farmers,” Mr Reed said.

The app is free to download on Android and iOS and more information can be found at agric.wa.gov.au/management-reproduction/lambing- planner.

Paper-based copies of the Lambing Planner will still be available, from the department’s Katanning office, by contacting [email protected] or from AWI.

Source: WA DPIRD.