On-Line Decision Support System for Finished Lamb Production

This paper describes the design and application of a decision support system to assist sheep farmers, allowing them to assess the impact of lambing date, feeding system and the price of concentrate feed on their enterprise efficiency. Industry partners Hybu Cig Cymru (HCC) and farmers have been used as sources of expert data. To validate the system three informed examples are used to measure how minor changes in a farm's production system can make relatively large changes in enterprise profitability. The result is a decision support system for sheep farmers that is user friendly and provides data and visual feedback; it also allows the service provider to update market prices on an annual basis. Limitations of the current decision support system are its inability to consider scenarios which involve the diverse weather patterns which have implications for production systems and long term market trends.