A YORKSHIRE college is trialling a new state-of-the-art electronic identification system for its sheep.

Bishop Burton College has lambed 370 ewes and as part of a trial with Asda and meat processor Dubia, the college has been fitting some of the newborns with microchip tags.

The tags contain information that can be read in just a fraction of a second thanks to the microchip and the college is hoping that the chip will put an end to the struggle of trying to read faded numbers on traditional tags and then having to cross-reference with records.

Farm manager at the college Phil Richardson said that the benefits to staff at the college who are working with the sheep will be enormous.

He said: “From the simple things like no more lost or torn tags, right through to making genetic and breeding decisions, plus feeding, worming, monitoring fleece quality and all forward-planning for a flock, the possibilities are endless.”

Phil also said that the students at the college will benefit from the microchips as they learn to read the chips.

He said: “Our students will learn over a longer period of monitoring the animals with the microchip fitted. Once a database of information is built up the different ways we’ll be able to use it are endless.”