You've heard of GPS ear tags for sheep and cattle, but now Desert Channels Queensland have used the technology on camels.
The mob of 16 bulls, females and calves are being analysed, via ground and air monitoring, on their effectiveness in controlling growth and reproduction of prickly acacia trees, which is widespread in parts of central and north west Queensland.
In what could be a first for the breed, each animal was also recently fitted with a GPS ear tag to provide four hourly updates on their movements.
It wasn't an easy feat.
After a failed attempt at mustering them, DCQ enlisted the help of Mount Isa's Paul Keegan and patiently spent an entire day getting the stubborn animals into a set of portable panel yards and an extra high race for tagging.
The group's operations manager Simon Wiggins said neck collars didn't suit the heavily wooded areas the animals travelled through on the land north of Stamford where they'd been since last May.
"We were very fortunate to have the help of Paul Keegan from Mount Isa who is a bit of a camel whisperer and we have learnt that you have to deal with these camels in a very different ways to what we normally understand how to deal with cattle and sheep," he said.
"It's probably the ultimate in soft mustering, you certainly don't use bikes; not if you want to get them where you want them in the yards.
"It's very soft pressure and then you wait and they are very smart little animals and eventually they will decide what they want to do."
Early findings from the trial have already disproved a number of producers' myths about running camels on agricultural land.
The fear that one camel was the equivalent of one cow was more likely a four to one ratio.
Concerns that the towering animals would eat pastures intended for other livestock was also proving false.
"What we are learning so far is that if the camels have a choice they would prefer not to eat Mitchell grass, they would definitely prefer not to eat buffel grass, they do have to have a little bit of roughage in their day, but what we are finding is some of the original ideas that people came into this program with that they explained to us are probably not quite true," Mr Wiggins.
"They eat 3.6kg of flowers a day and each flower is worth about five grams so a camel, even though they might not kill the prickles, they are a really valuable mechanism to make sure you don't get a lot of seeds."
The group will deliver their findings in April but already believe a producer could save tens of thousands of dollars in follow up control just by running a mob of camels in an affected area for three to four years.
"They would eat down the seed load, stop that seed load from building up," Mr Wiggins said.
The camels generally eat in consistent spots but, during the day, the bulls and even older calves have been moving away from the females.
While they did graze on other grasses when the prickles began to turn, they actually lost some condition while away from their preferred diet.
Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
