Canadian Auction Markets Test RFID Readers

The three participants already RFID-enabled are Ontario Livestock Exchange and Ottawa Livestock Exchange (also known as Leo's Livestock), in Ontario; and B.C. Co-op Livestock Sales, in British Columbia. The eight new participants are Ontario Stockyards, in Ontario; Ste. Rose Auction Mart, Gladstone Auction Mart, Killarney Auction Mart, and Winnipeg Livestock Sales, in Manitoba; and Whitewood Livestock Sales, Spiritwood Livestock Sales and Saskatoon Livestock Sales, in Saskatchewan.

RFID tagging of cattle is mandatory in Canada, so all animals coming to the auction have a passive low-frequency (LF) tag already attached to their ears.

Each tag's unique ID number is registered with the federal government, and is linked with the farm at which that animal originated. CCIA's staff has now set up RFID reader portals in various locations at the eight auction sites in which the technology had not yet been installed. The project is using existing reader technology in the other two cases. In all cases, CCIA's employees read the RFID tags that the animals had attached to their ears as calves by workers at the farm where they were born, rather than attaching new tags.

CCIA's staff members on site are charged with noting the RFID read rate of cattle tags as the animals arrive at the auction site and are moved through chutes into the facility. The tags are interrogated once more as the cattle are sold and moved out of the facility to be transported by truck. Using a cabled Internet connection, the readers then transmit the tag ID numbers to a back-end server, where CCIA software stores the read data.

In addition to overseeing the tag reads and ensuring tags are being captured by the interrogators as cattle pass through the chute, CCIA's employees look for any conditions that may cause the read rate to drop, such as cold weather, wet or muddy cattle, or the speed at which the animals traveled through the chute. They are also studying when and why RFID technology may slow down the process of moving cattle through a chute in a timely fashion. Readers have been installed at portals where cattle enter or leave the auction facility. In some cases, the animals will pass through narrow chutes one at a time—such as in the smaller markets—and in other cases, the readers will be installed at five-foot-wide chutes through which multiple cattle may pass at a time.

As the weather gets colder, the technology can be tested in varying temperature conditions, as well as in rain and snow. "It's 5 degrees [Celsius] today and snowing," Wright says. "The cattle are pretty wet." These are the kinds of conditions the participants hope to see more of as winter approaches, he says, so that they can properly test the hardware. According to Wright, the rate at which cattle move could also affect how well the interrogators capture tag reads, as well as whether the technology slows the animals' movement. Although the fall cattle season (with low beef prices) got off to a slow start, he says he expects a surge of cattle in the coming months to create a greater challenge for the technology.