GPS tracking sheep in the Mallee Why…  Can we quantify how sheep graze Mallee landscapes?  Do sheep use different soil zones differently across a field?  If there is differential grazing pressure, how does that translate into an impact on ground cover, biomass etc.?  What are the potential applications of this sort of data?

1. Precision Livestock
Production: GPS
Animal TrackingZac Economou

2. The Precision Agriculture Research Group
 A group of lecturers and researchers
from across UNE
 Agronomy
 Animal science
 Physics
 Computational science
 Adjunct staff
 NSW DPI
 Vic DEPI
 Students
 Honours
 PhD

3. What are the challenges in grazing
systems?
 Soils – nutrient management, fertiliser is one of
the biggest inputs to a grazing system
 Quantifying pastures – having access to
information around the amount, growth rate
and quality of pasture to enable optimal
stocking rate
 Animal monitoring – understanding where your
animals are up to in terms of production, health
and welfare
 Labour – using labour more efficiently, it’s the
biggest cost in most farming operations

4. GPS tracking in the Mallee…

5. GPS tracking sheep in the Mallee
Why…
 Can we quantify how sheep graze Mallee
landscapes?
 Do sheep use different soil zones differently
across a field?
 If there is differential grazing pressure, how does
that translate into an impact on ground cover,
biomass etc.?
 What are the potential applications of this sort of
data?

6. The sheep…
 200 ewes grazed in the paddock
 27 GPS collars deployed (we lost a
few)
 Locations tracked every 7 minutes

7. GPS tracking…

8. Summer Grazing
1 2
3 4

10. Winter Grazing

11. Paddock utilsiation

12. Autonomous Livestock
Monitoring
(Livestock tracking)
RBT/GPS and IMU
(accelerometer)
EarTag
GPS collar, store-on-board
and part of herd
Real-time data
delivery

13. Hmm, they
were here this
morning???
Where are my animals?
Meanwhile
2km down
the road

14. More than just “where are my cows?”

15. Clinical/sub-clinical disease detection
Barwick, Trotter, Dobos, Welch, Schnieder and Economou (2014) Understanding sheep behaviour from
a tri-axial accelerometer. 2014 Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management
Symposium, Hamilton NZ, Ed J Roberts, 18th November 2014, p. 9.

16. Autonomous livestock management
(Virtual fencing)

17. Virtual Fencing?

18. Next steps – can we use to rotationally
graze?

19. Conclusion
 We need to understand variation as well as quantify it.
 A number of technologies are on their way.
 Questions needs to be answered before they are commercially
available.
 Offer a more precise way to manage animals and pasture