
In this episode of the Red Dirt Agronomy Podcast, Dr. Mark Trotter, a precision livestock management researcher and professor from Central Queensland University, emphasizes the importance of collecting precise data on individual animals to improve management practices in livestock, which can lead to better outcomes in terms of health and productivity.
Queensland is known as the beef capital of Australia. The climate is similar to the Stillwater area in the heat and humidity but lacks winter’s freezes and spring’s tornados. While the area does include some feedlots, it is almost exclusively comprised of cow-calf producers and grass-finished beef animals.
Dr. Trotter admitted that when it was new and exciting, new technological advances were often created, and then people had to look for problems for it to solve. Recently, however, it has been making a big difference in the issues beef cattle producers face.
For example, Dr. Trotter described reproductive efficiency issues in Northern Australia. There, producers often lose 20% of their calf crop between pregnancy testing and weaning. Some of the reasons for those issues are nutritional challenges on the large ranges, specifically phosphorous deficiency.
Research has shown that about 10% are lost during gestation, and 10% are from calving to weaning, but the causes are variable. “Understanding why we are losing these calves is a big part of solving the problem,” Dr. Trotter explained. “Some of the technologies we are trying to develop for the industry will help producers measure what is going on their properties in their season.”
Precision technology in beef herds can help track why a cow didn’t get bred, why she lost a calf, which cows produced calves, and which calves grew efficiently. Dr. Trotter said, “There is a heap of opportunity to refine our system.”
The research team at Central Queensland University looks at a range of different technologies, but the one they foresee the most potential is the Smart Tag. “This includes GPS location, to show where your cow is, and it also has an accelerometer component which senses movement,” he described. “That gives you the behavior of the animal. Essentially, it is like the step counter in your phone. The tag operates off of a radio link or satellite.”
The Smart Tag is a bit smaller than a traditional beef ear tag and is solar powered. Some of the systems require Wi-Fi towers to be installed roughly every 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), and others work directly from satellites.
The Smart Tag has helped to answer several of the questions presented by the industry challenges in Australia such as where the cattle are grazing on the large properties. With that information, a rancher can decide whether or not they should add a fence to encourage cattle to graze a specific area, or whether adding a watering hole would be beneficial.
It also helps track estrus activity and calving behaviors or labor dystocias. “That little bit of technology and the little bit of information it gathers is quite revolutionary if we can get it working out in these systems,” Dr. Trotter concluded.
Producers are currently using the Smart Tags, but due to the expense, none have them in every cow’s ear, yet; however, even their basic utilization is already saving ranchers helicopter fuel by telling them just where their cows are on the very large expanses of grazing area. Producers also use the tags to keep track of high-value animals, often bulls.
They continue to work on managing the information that the tags gather to show the producer only what he wants to see whether that be birthing success, grazing distribution, or any other key data.
Click here to listen to the entire Red Dirt Agronomy Podcast episode.