Sheep farmers could soon be able to estimate their flock’s liveweight and fleece weight in real time, without the need for labour-intensive handling.
The new system, being developed by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, will capture measurements in real time as animals move naturally through their environment.
FlockMate is a 2-year research project co-funded by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) and CSIRO.
Liveweight, which measures the combined weight of the animal and its fleece, provides key insights into feed availability, animal health and key production stages such as lambing and sale readiness. Tracking changes in liveweight over time can also help identify shifts in growth or condition.
However, consistently measuring liveweight across an entire flock remains a challenge, with existing systems often requiring manual handling or relying on sheep engaging with weighing systems, which can result in incomplete data.
CSIRO Principal Research Scientist, Dr Sabrina Greenwood, said that FlockMate aims to overcome these challenges, allowing for more regular monitoring across the growth cycle.
“Keeping track of liveweight can tell producers a lot about what’s happening to their sheep, whether that’s how the flock is responding to seasonal conditions or how they’re tracking through production stages,” Dr Greenwood said.
“Making those measurements easier and more frequent will help producers spot these changes sooner, meaning more informed decisions can be made across their flock.”
CSIRO’s Quantitative Imaging Team Leader Dr Xun Li said a multimodal sensor system is used to capture high-resolution 3D images of each individual animal as it moves in view of the sensors.
“Advanced AI and computer vision algorithms then analyse these data to generate accurate estimates of body volume, liveweight and fleece weight, with each measurement automatically associated with the animal’s Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag,” said Dr Li.
“This enables frequent, non-invasive monitoring without interrupting normal farm operations.”
Early prototypes of the system are being developed at CSIRO’s Chiswick Research Station in New South Wales, a 1,500-hectare property home to a Merino flock with approximately 2,700 breeding ewes.
The project also draws on insights from the Sustainable Chiswick Project, a separate but complementary initiative focused on on-farm sustainability and innovation.
These insights include work on sustainability frameworks and traceability, landscapes and biodiversity, animal welfare benchmarking and the use of sensors and data to support on-farm decision making.
Dr Greenwood said the results of this testing, alongside the input of more than 20 producers, is helping to guide the design of the system.
“We’ve worked closely with producers to understand how they would use a system like this on farm, and that input has been crucial in shaping the design,” Dr Greenwood said.
“Their feedback has ensured that the system is practical and reflects the real on-farm conditions that producers are working in.”
The project team is continuing to work with producers and supply chain stakeholders at key stages to ensure the system is fit for purpose and able to be adopted at scale.
While currently focused on sheep production, outcomes of this research have the potential to be applied to cattle and livestock industries in the future, providing a foundation for next-generation, digital livestock monitoring technologies.
CSIRO researchers will be representing FlockMate at LambEx 2026 at the Adelaide Convention Centre, South Australia from 7-8 July 2026.
