New virtual fencing trial to boost drought resilience

A major virtual fencing trial aimed at improving drought resilience for North Queensland graziers operating remote rangeland enterprises is now underway.

The Virtually Fence Free project, delivered by NQ Dry Tropics in partnership with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), aims to determine drought resilient grazing systems to maximise pasture performance, rainfall response and animal production, while improving long-term land condition.

The five-year trial, funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, is taking place at DAF’s Spyglass Beef Research Facility in the Upper Burdekin, north of Charters Towers.

Limited coverage poses a challenge

Project Lead, NQ Dry Tropics Drought Resilience Coordinator Marc McConnell, said the trial aimed to address a wide range of knowledge gaps, first and foremost how to make Agtech work reliably in remote areas to help achieve realistic production targets.

“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.”

Mr McConnell said the project team had installed virtual fencing base stations at Spyglass, which used Starlink wifi to transmit the coordinates of a virtual paddock boundary to a herd of cattle, each fitted with a virtual fencing collar.

“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. We’ve seen so far that the animals appear to be learning quite quickly to respect the virtual paddock boundaries,” Mr McConnell said.

“A mobile app allows us to monitor the location of both the herd and individual cattle in near real time, and almost instantaneously modify paddock boundaries depending on the needs of the herd and what conditions are looking like on the ground. 

“Walk over weighing systems and ongoing land condition assessment will also form part of an extensive remote and on-ground monitoring program to enable us to determine grazing patterns and preferences under various conditions and their impact on health and production.

“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.”

Game changer

DAF Animal Production Scientist Jarud Muller said the technology could be a game changer for 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, with a consortium of scientists, local graziers and industry leaders 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.”