The move is a result of the Dunedin meat co-operative introducing its MVTS X-ray technology in its Finegand, Pareora and Takapau works to provide that conformation information.
Silver Fern Farms (SFF) chief executive Keith Cooper said meat yield was just part of the carcass conformation formula, and the technology would generate what he called "a carcass performance measurement".
"Yield is too definitive."
He said yield related to the ratio of meat to bone, whereas SFF wanted to pay for the overall quality of the animal and how the meat was distributed over the carcass, but especially the portion of high-paying cuts relative to low-paying cuts.
To earn the premium, farmers would have to commit supply to SFF after which all their lambs would be streamed to the three plants initially fitted out with the MVTS technology.
Premium payments would be over and above the schedule at that time.
Mr Cooper said, at the recent MVTS launch at Pareora, that other carcass conformation predictive systems such as VIAscan only provided an estimate, because it could not see through the carcass like an X-ray.
The MVTS X-ray technology, developed by Dunedin's Robotic Technologies Ltd - a joint venture between SFF and Scott Technology - took a 3-D image of each carcass and accurately predicted the weights of the three primal cuts (leg, middle and shoulder), and the optimum point at which to make each cut.
Carcass information was fed into production scheduling to determine the best processing option for each animal and would also to programme robotic processing technology.
Scott Technology believes it could have a fully automated lamb-cutting room within five years.
With a shoulder worth about half that of a leg or middle, accurate cutting to recover the maximum volume of high-value meat was worthwhile to farmers and the meat company.
It also counted the number of ribs in each lamb.
While developing the technology, researchers found that about 18% of lambs did not have 13 ribs, the assumed number for lambs, but could have 12 or 14.
This can mean wastage, as those lambs that did not conform were processed the same, but the end-product was not always suitable.
Mr Cooper said the system generated a huge amount of information on each lamb which could assist with breeding, management and feeding decisions.
Mr Cooper said the system would cost about 15c to 45c a carcass depending on installation costs and plant throughput, but improved meat recovery and matching each lamb to the various markets should increase returns by $2 to $5 a lamb.
Radio frequency identification traceability technology would be added to the system allowing the tracking of data, weight and defects.
Eventually, the MVTS technology would advance to include the ratio of meat to fat to bone.
Alliance Group has also purchased an MVTS X-ray primal cut, but Mr Cooper said last week that some of the technology, such as the collection of carcass information which would be fed back to farmers, would be only available to SFF.
Alliance has for several years used VIAscan technology to make yield quality contract payments to its suppliers.
VIAscan took an image of the carcass and, using complex algorithms, compared the shape and colour profile of the carcass with a database on thousands of boning trial results.
It divided the carcass into the three primal cuts and reported the meat yield for each, which was compared against an ideal market weight range and yield for each area of the carcass.
Alliance has been involved in Central Progeny test trials for many years, which identified lines and traits within sheep breeds which have the desired carcass genetics.