Changes in the way livestock movements are reported in various parts of the UK have been ongoing for some time. EIDCymru and ScotEID now manage sheep movements in Wales and Scotland and more recently ScotMovesPlus has replaced BCMS for reporting cattle movements in Scotland.

ARAMS for sheep in England is now being replaced by the LIS and you will not be able to submit movements to ARAMS after 25th March 2022.

It's impractical to add new features to our older apps, so to ensure that there is always a way of getting tag reads stored on your Shearwell Stick Reader we are providing a simple PC application to retrieve the tag reads by stick reader group in a format that you can easily upload to the LIS.

Stick Link Requirements

Stick Link runs on a Bluetooth enabled Windows PC or laptop (supported on Windows 10® and Windows 11®). If your Windows computer doesn't already support Bluetooth, you can add it using a Bluetooth dongle. We list one in the online shop that we've found works well but there are many alternatives available from the usual peripheral suppliers.

Getting Started

1.   Create Group

Create a new group on the stick by turning it on and holding in the button until the display says “New Group”

2.   Scan Animals

Scan all the tags of animals that are being moved

3.   Extra Groups

If several groups of animals are being moved with different source and destination holdings, create a separate group on the stick for each group being moved and scan the tags into the group

4.   Run Stick Link

Run Stick Link and get the tag reads from the stick (this will archive previous read files)

5.   Movements

Fill in the movement details on the LIS movement page and pick the saved tag file to upload

6.   Batch Move

If there were any animals whose tags failed to read, add a batch move for each flock number with missing reads

7.   Complete

Complete and submit the movement

You can find more information about LIS at livestockinformation.org.uk

Basic Livestock Movements

You can also do basic movements directly to the LIS using your LIS login. The main fields are completed but this will not provide a printout of paper documents needed to accompany the sheep in transit.

Importing Holding Lists

If you already have a list of holdings that you'd like to import into Stick Link, create a text file containing your holding list like the example below:

CPH,Holding Type,Holding Name

Holding Type should be Holding, Abattoir,Collection Centre or Market.

Save it e.g. to your desktop then in the Maintain Holdings page, click the Import Holdings from CSV File and browse for it.

Is StickLink app cropping content?

If some of the controls appear clipped please try changing the high DPI settings by right clicking the Stick Link icon on the desktop, clicking the compatibility tab then the Change high DPI settings. Tick "Override high DPI scaling behaviour" and select "System"