Drought resilience enhanced
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 Primary Industries (DPI), 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 is taking place at DAF’s Spyglass Beef Research Facility in the Upper Burdekin, north of Charters Towers.
Limited coverage poses a challenge
The trial aims 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.
The NQ Dry Tropics and DPI team members think they we can get around that problem using Starlink wifi to form a network capable of transmitting coordinates of a virtual paddock boundary.
Once that is achieved, the progress of the trial will become very interesting for Northern Australian Beef producers.
The virtual paddock keeps animals within its perimeter by sending signals to an animal as it approaches the virtual fenceline.
The collar emits a series of warning beeps and if ignored delivers an aversive but harmless pulse which trains the animal respond to the audible cues.
Observation showed the herd quickly learnt to respond to the audible cues.
The herd — or individuals in the herd — can be tracked using a mobile phone app that can also “move the fences” on the virtual paddock depending on the needs of the herd and conditions on the ground.
Walk over weigh systems and ongoing land condition assessment will also form part of an extensive remote and on-ground monitoring program to enable grazing patterns and preferences under various conditions to be recorded and the impact they have on health and production.
Game changer
DPI 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 in 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.”
NQ Dry Tropics and the DPI are conscious 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.
The Virtually Fence Free project delivered by NQ Dry Tropics is funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund
