Tracking cattle from space with new technology
Print Edition
Australian farmers managing cattle stations as large as some European nations will soon be able to monitor their cows and pastures from space as part of “groundbreaking” technology, scientists say.
The technology, developed with government and private funding, taps into a satellite passing overhead to record the weights of herds daily while monitoring pasture conditions — a task traditionally impossible due to the stations’ vast sizes and harsh, remote locations.
Some stations, such as Newcastle Waters in Northern Territory, span 10,000 square kilometers — an area larger than Cyprus — and house 55,000 cattle.
“There’s just a huge labor component and time that goes into collecting that data, which is essentially why producers don’t do it on a more regular basis,” Sally Leigo from Northern Territory’s primary industry department, the project’s research leader, said yesterday.
On average, cattle are only weighed 1.5 times a year and only two percent of pasture is regularly viewed, the organization that developed the tool estimates.
The technology exploits the stations’ semi-arid conditions, which means there is little access to surface water with cattle having to walk to man-made watering points each day.
A weighing platform that the cows must step on is placed at the watering points and powered by solar panels, with the data fed to a satellite and then to a station manager’s computer.
The satellite also monitors pastures every 250 metres allowing farmers to determine when cattle must be moved to the next paddock.
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