North Queensland graziers operating remote range land enterprises will now be able to improve their drought resilience through access to a major virtual fencing trial.
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NQ Dry Tropics in partnership with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries have delivered the Virtually Fence Free project to determine drought resilient grazing systems for maximising pasture performance, rainfall response and animal production and improving long-term land condition.
Project lead and NQ Dry Tropics drought resilience coordinator Marc McConnell said the five-year trial would address a wide range of knowledge gaps by first looking at ways to improve Agtech's reliability in remote areas to help achieve realistic production targets.
The trial, funded by the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund, is being carried out at DAF's Spyglass Beef Research Facility in the Upper Burdekin, north of Charters Towers.
"Like much of remote Northern Australia, Spyglass has limited mobile coverage, meaning virtual fencing systems requiring network access aren't yet a fully effective or accessible tool," Mr McConnell said.
"We think we can get around this problem and, once we do, this trial's progress will become more and more interesting for northern Australian beef producers."
Virtual fencing base stations have been installed at Spyglass and Starlink WiFi had been used to transmit the coordinates of a virtual paddock boundary to a herd of cattle, each fitted with a virtual fencing collar.
A mobile app allows users to monitor the location of the herd and individual cattle in "near real time" while also modifying paddock boundaries depending on the needs of the herd and ground conditions.
"When cattle approach the virtual fence, the collar emits a series of warning beeps. If an animal ignores these beeps, it receives an aversive but harmless pulse which trains it to respond to the audible cues," Mr McConnell said.
"We've seen so far that the animals appear to be learning quite quickly to respect the virtual paddock boundaries."
Mr McConnell said walk-over weighing systems and ongoing land condition assessment would also form part of an extensive remote and on-ground monitoring program.
"(These would) enable us to determine grazing patterns and preferences under various conditions and their impact on health and production," he said.
"The information collected will also shed more light on the needs of various cattle classes, as well as the ideal time to rotate cattle to maintain optimal production and minimise degeneration of land condition.
"We will be able to match cattle requirements to available feed in the paddock, and to spell preferentially overgrazed areas."
DAF Animal Production Scientist Jarud Muller said the technology could be a game changer for the industry.
"The potential benefit I find most exciting is the ability to shift cattle into a defined area of a paddock by simply drawing a shape within the app on your computer," Mr Muller said.
"The ability to manage grazing in such an adaptive way is a game changer for industry.
"We can match stocking rate to feed supply and optimise grazing utilisation on a finer spatial scale within each 'shape' to improve land condition and best meet cattle nutritional needs."
Mr McConnel said extensive collaboration would be critical to success and a group of scientists, local graziers and industry leaders had been engaged to provide ongoing guidance throughout the trial.
"We are excited to be working with DAF as our primary project partner," Mr McConnell said.
"Joining them as part of the consortium will be a group of graziers and scientists whose ongoing input will help ensure the trial meets the real world needs of rangeland cattle producers."
The project is the only trial taking place in northern Australia.
