North West producers heard the latest advancements of agricultural technology at a BeefUp Forum in Mount Isa last week.
A presentation by Precision Pastoral highlighted the development and commercialisation of the Remote Livestock Management System (RLMS) that identifies, weighs and drafts individual animals without on-site labour requirements.
Precision Pastoral Management Tools Project research leader, Sally Leigo, said RLMS was made possible through the adoption of automated technologies.
“The system allows us to monitor cattle live weight as well as pasture production,” Ms Leigo said.
“We deployed the system on cattle stations around northern Australia including Dalgonally Station at Julia Creek.
“It was situated at a watering point, so as cattle leave the yard it collects their radio-frequency identification tag and live weight, the data was then transmitted on a daily basis back to our cloud based network.
“That information then collected satellite data on the pasture and the information was analysed and summerised for the producer on a weekly basis.
“Producers then reviewed their cattle live weight and production information to make decisions around what they needed to do around supplementing or selling cattle.”
The RLMS was designed to support timely, profitable management decision making within a beef enterprise while implementing principals of low stress stock handling.
“The system will have picked up any changes in cattle before physical conditions are displayed. This will allow producers to minimise the weight loss of stock and allow them to put management decisions into place,” Ms Leigo said.
“Training cattle to walk through the system is dependent on the producer’s existing infrastructure and cattle experience.
“If the cattle have had little experience with a trap gate, or walking over scales it could take up to three weeks for a gradual, familiarisation of the system.”
With most parts of north Queensland being affected by a wet season, surface water also comes into play throughout the summer months.
Precision Pastoral took into account the possibility of more than one source of water and developed the Targeted Deployment tool.
“This involves producers thinking smartly about where to deploy the weighing systems, so it records a representative herd on a representative land type with less surface water.
“Through the use of that live weight and satellite data, it will make an estimate of what is happening in other paddocks with similar classes of stock.
“Therefore you don’t necessarily need to have a weighing platform in every paddock. It also helps with surface water and cattle not accessing the watering point on a regular basis.”