Pregnancy scanning for increased farm productivity
Pregnancy scanning is a tool that can improve your ability to strategically manage breeding ewes to improve productivity and profitability. It is important to use the information from scanning to achieve the benefit for your enterprise, writes Millie Sheales of AWI Extension QLD and Leading Sheep.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure
Ewe nutrition is a key driver of net reproductive rate and the lifetime productivity of her progeny. Pregnancy scanning provides the information you require to optimally manage the nutrition and lambing conditions of breeding ewes. Scanning enables you to:
Benchmark: Develop a record of reproductive performance over time and track responsiveness to changes in management and seasons. Scanning for multiples and tracking the proportion of multiples/singles/empty ewes provides insight into the impact of nutrition on reproductive performance of your flock.
Manage: Improve lambing outcomes by managing nutrition and paddock conditions for multiple-bearing ewes. Understanding your flock’s lambing potential assists with pasture budgeting and financial planning.
Select: Identify and retain the ‘performer’ ewes and remove ‘passengers’ (i.e. once- or twice-empty or failed to rear ewes depending on your situation) to improve reproductive performance.
Making data-driven decisions
Pregnancy scanning can be used to identify the litter size of pregnant ewes, thereby enabling optimised nutrition and lambing management of each group, which increases marking rates and farm profit.
Pregnancy scanning ewes enables producers to make data-driven management and selection decisions. The decisions made possible with scanning are:
Ewes scanned empty
Identifying empty ewes gives you the option to:
- Run them for wool – run them separately, stocking them at a higher rate than pregnant ewes.
- Re-join if it suits your management program – which can be useful when rebuilding post drought.
- Sell – which preserves pasture for productive animals; optimise the time of sale.
- Detect a joining failure early.
Ewes scanned pregnant
Identifying pregnant ewes enables you to:
- Meet their higher nutritional requirements by allocating them to better pastures and/or supplementary feeding.
- Allocate them to sheltered paddocks.
- Sell ewes scanned-in-lamb to receive price premiums.
Ewes scanned for multiples
Identifying the number of foetuses (multiples) provides information for you to:
- Manage nutritional requirements to maximise ewe and lamb survival – this includes managing single bearing ewes to prevent them getting too fat and providing adequate energy and protein for multiple-bearing ewes.
- Modify mob size – by having smaller mobs for multiple-bearing ewes.
- Allocate multiple-bearing ewes to the best pastures and most sheltered paddocks.
- Identify and select for the ‘performer’ ewes.
Set yourself and your scanner up for success
Pregnancy scanning conducted by a trained contractor with specialised equipment. PHOTO: Cousins Merino Services.
To maximise the accuracy of scanning, take the time to plan logistics and prepare your sheep, labour and infrastructure.
- Plan and prepare – book your scanner and additional labour early.
- Scan at the optimal time – call your scanner the day you put the rams in with the ewes to determine the most suitable scanning date.
- Hold ewes off feed and water for a minimum of six hours.
- Ensure adequate labour is present.
- If using electronic identification (eID), have a backup system.
- Consider the comfort of your scanner – provide shade where possible and water down the race if dust is expected.
Other factors that reduce the accuracy of scanning include joining for an extended period, light or fat ewes, and flighty sheep that are difficult to scan.
Pregnancy scanning resources
The AWI website provides a range of information resources to help woolgrowers maximise success with pregnancy scanning:
AWI & MLA extension publications
A pregnancy scanning benefit-cost analysis (BCA) funded by AWI and MLA found an average increase in profit of $5.55 per ewe when scanned for multiples and that information is used for management decisions – see the box below. AWI and MLA have issued a set of five booklets and fact sheets to help sheep producers get the most out of pregnancy scanning:
- Pregnancy scanning: an ultra-sound investment – This booklet is the primary, ‘go to’ extension resource. It is a comprehensive publication that not only explains pregnancy scanning and how it works, but also includes the three resources listed 2–4 below.
- The value of pregnancy scanning fact sheet – This two-page fact sheet summarises the results of the BCA, highlighting the economic benefit of pregnancy scanning and which management interventions provide the greatest return on investment.
- Ewe scanning and management checklist – A handy two-page checklist, this is designed to go on the fridge and be a reminder of the key dates, actions and activities for getting the most out of pregnancy scanning.
- AWI and MLA resource guide for sheep reproduction – This is a comprehensive listing of AWI and MLA sheep reproduction resources with information on how to access them. The resources are grouped into four categories: Reproduction; Sheep health; Feedbase & nutrition; and Breeding & selection.
- The value of pregnancy scanning: A benefit-cost analysis – If you’re interested in more detail, this five-page extract from the full BCA report includes the assumptions and growing season length for each scenario modelled in the BCA and includes a link to the full BCA report.
Pregnancy scanning webinars
AWI Extension NSW and Leading Sheep earlier this year ran two webinars that were recorded and are available to view:
- Scanning: an ultra-sound investment – delivered by Dr Sue Hatcher from Makin Outcomes, this webinar covers the new AWI and MLA pregnancy scanning resources; the value of scanning with insights from the BCA; and making data-driven management and selection decisions.
- I have my scanning results: what now? – delivered by Josh Cousins, Cousins Merino Services, this webinar explains how to best prepare your sheep for scanning to enable optimum information capture (think accuracy and a smooth scanning process). Josh discusses how to manage the data you capture to provide productivity gains in your flock – with one, or more, years' worth of data. The webinar also includes plenty of questions answered from the perspective of a scanning contractor.
More information: www.wool.com/pregscanning
Benefit-cost analysis proves the benefit of pregnancy scanning
More than half of Australian sheep and wool producers do not scan their ewes, with the main reason for producers not scanning being because they ‘see no benefit’.
A recent benefit-cost analysis funded by AWI and MLA shows that pregnancy scanning for multiples, and implementing optimal management to ewes based on their reproductive status, provides sheep and wool producers with a significant return on investment:
- Scanning for multiples increased profit by an average of $5.55 per ewe scanned, with an average return on investment of 400%.
- Scanning for multiples provided more than twice the average profit of scanning for only pregnancy status (pregnant or empty).
- Scanning for multiples is profitable in all Australian regions and flock types studied.
- Capturing the potential profit requires implementing some management changes to utilise the information provided from scanning.
With the evidence that pregnancy scanning is a valuable tool for increasing reproductive efficiency and farm profitability, it is anticipated there will be increased adoption of the practice.
Top image credit: Amy Lyon Creative, for Robinson PregScan
This article appeared in the Spring 2025 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine that was published in September 2025. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.
