Spatially Resilient Grazing Systems Measuring and optimising landscape utilisation in rangeland sheep and goats-

Summary

This project sought to quantify small ruminant landscape utilisation by GPS tracking numerous animals on properties in Western Queensland.

Benefits to industry

It is difficult to extrapolate the findings from this study to make general recommendations across the entire industry. The unique features of each property and animal type that was monitored in this project means that the observations may not necessarily be directly transferable to other properties with different landscape characteristics.

Despite this, some interesting insights have been made and can be used by producers to assess their own operation. The fact that few animals grazed beyond 2.5 km from a water source confirms the information currently being provided to the industry. However, given that most animals preferred to be within 500m of a water point suggests that a more intensive distribution of water points should be considered by producers seeking to optimise landscape utilisation. Again, this cannot be made as a general recommendation but will provide producers seeking to develop country with infrastructure some guidance in their thinking.

One of the key benefits to industry is the value of the objective GPS tracking data to producers. For some producers involved it revealed genuinely unknown trends in spatial landscape utilisation. As the project team sat with producers and worked through the results they were often met with exclamations of surprise that certain areas of a paddock where either used or not used by the sheep and goats. Although it is currently not possible for producers to generate this data outside of a research project, there are many commercial technology developers seeking to provide GPS tracking as a day-to-day management tool. The development and economical provision of this service will undoubtedly have a profound effect on enabling producers to gain deep insights into their livestock landscape interactions and subsequently implement management strategies to improve production and efficiency. The key to this will be the development of affordable systems that can be reliably deployed on small ruminants.

Future research

This project has highlighted a number of areas of future research that could prove valuable to the industry.

Continued investigation into the spatial landscape utilisation of small ruminants in rangelands is warranted. Although this project has been terminated early, the research in this area will continue to be supported through the Masters student at NMSU and will involve more properties. However, there is a need to gain a broader understanding of how these animals utilise the landscape across a wider diversity of operations in the rangelands as each property has many unique features. The understanding of how animals use water resources and other features (particularly shade and shelter) across more sites will allow more solid recommendations to be developed to assist producers in designing infrastructure development programs.

One of the key outcomes of this project were the trends observed in relating animal spatial landscape behaviour with temperature. There were clear relationships, however, only a limited amount of data to explore genuine thermal stress events was collected. There is an increasing interest within the industry in understanding how heat stress events might impact on productivity and sustainability on rangeland ruminant production systems. Further research into monitoring sheep and goat behaviour under genuine thermal stress events and the evaluation of management interventions that might ameliorate the effects of these climate extremes will be necessary.

Another key area that could see significant benefit to the industry is the development of real-time commercially affordable GPS tracking systems for small ruminants. These systems are being developed but much of the focus is around larger systems appropriate for cattle only. There may be ways in which this technology could be rapidly adapted for use on small ruminants and this warrants investigation. The benefits that these systems might provide to producers in terms of the data.