Ian Hingeley (Mobile) 0428580706

Ian says "I worked as a jackeroo in Western Australia, and then joined the Rural Dep't of the ABC for 23 years, based in Sale. In the 1990's my family and I moved to Mallacoota, where I spent twelve years working offshore as a longline fisherman. In my spare time, I continued my interest in sheep and spent about twenty five years travelling up to Keri-Keri Merino Stud, near Balranald, NSW with Peter Dowling, helping develop the Keri-Keri sheep, and trying to make the data more manageable. After fighting paper work in wind and rain for many years we then used a more simple form of “Data-based SheepTrack™”, manually reading the conventional ear tags at classing time. We never achieved 100% accuracy reading the tags, as the 3's can be read as an 8, a 6 can be read as a 9 if it was read upside down etc, and this was always frustrating. We later found out that others were experiencing the same difficulties. With the advent of electronic tags (EID's), and tag scanners, (particularly 'stick readers'), combined with laptop computers, a whole range of new possibilities opened up, and I contacted my nephew Tim, to ask him if he was interested in becoming involved, and developing “Data-based SheepTrack™” to bring sheep up in the database using the new EID technology". Tim has made a great contribution to “Data-based SheepTrack™”.