1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium University of New England Armidale NSW Australia 15 th July 2010 Proceedings of the 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium University of New England Armidale NSW Australia 15 th July 2010 ISBN 978-1-921597-23-7 Editors: M.G. Trotter, D.W. Lamb and T.F. Trotter Published by: Precision Agriculture Research Group, University of New England, Armidale, Australia. Printed: July 2010. Example Citation: Donald DD and Daffy DD (2010) “GPS-enabled duck plucking”. In: Proceedings of the 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium. M.G. Trotter, D.W. Lamb and T.F. Trotter (Editors), Precision Agriculture Research Group, University of New England, Australia. 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium Foreword Welcome to the 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium and welcome to the New England region and the University of New England (UNE)! The university prides itself on its regional and global impact and, with a long history of education and research in rural and environmental science, is particularly proud to host this first symposium. Spatial monitoring of livestock and their environment has been a rapidly expanding area of research in Australia, New Zealand and around the world over the past few years. Furthermore, systems for commercial deployment are currently being developed to enable producers to make use of this technology. It’s an exciting time to be a researcher; however we need to be aware of the many challenges we face if these technologies are to be successfully adopted by industry. Communication between technology developers, researchers, funding bodies and producers is fundamental to ensuring a coordinated approach to research and to ensure practical outcomes for industry. This is one of the primary functions of this symposium, bringing together all these parties to share knowledge and build working relationships! This symposium has a diverse range of speakers and, as a direct consequence of discussions from last year’s GPS Livestock Tracking Forum, keynote speaker Toby Patterson will provide insights into animal movement and behavioural modelling in ecology, an allied research area from which the livestock industry can learn a great deal. So whether you are a researcher intent on using the technology to understand the mysteries of plant and animal interactions, or a producer just wanting to know where your cows are, we hope you will glean something useful from the event! Mark Trotter Symposium Organiser Acknowledgements This symposium has been enabled by the support and resources of the CRC for Spatial Information II (CRCSI2), established and supported under the Australian Governments Cooperative Research Centres Program. Funding for the Symposium has also been generously provided by Meat and Livestock Australia and CRCSI-2. i 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium Program 11:00am Introduction & opening address Jim Barber (UNE Vice Chancellor) 11:10am Why does it matter where animals urinate? Keith Betteridge (AgResearch NZ) 11:20am Active Optical Sensors for grazing systems research David Lamb (UNE PARG) 11:30am GNSS monitoring of temperament variations in cattle Lauren Williams (University of Sydney – Masters candidate) 11:35am Spatially enabled livestock management: increasing biomass utilisation in rotational systems Jessica Roberts (UNE PARG – PhD candidate) 11:40am Lunch (ASAP close) 1:00pm Keynote Address: The state of the art in movement and behavioural modelling in ecology Toby Paterson (CSIRO) 1:45pm Research directions in Northern Australia – the development of CSIRO’s Lansdown Research Station Greg Bishop-Hurley (CSIRO) 1:55pm On saleyards and surveillance – using livestock movement records for risk- based surveillance planning Kerryn Graham (CSIRO) 2:05pm GNSS livestock tracking at the University of Sydney Greg Cronin (University of Sydney) 2:15pm Linking GPS and satellite remote sensing to monitor animal behaviour and environmental Interactions Rebecca Handcock (CSIRO) 2:25pm New tools in spatio-temporal grazing systems research Mark Trotter (UNE PARG) 2:30pm Understanding sheep grazing in complex pastures to better manage natural resources and production outcomes Felicity Cox (Charles Sturt University - PhD candidate) 2:35pm Spatio-temporal monitoring of sheep to investigate shelter and shade use Geoff Hinch (UNE PARG) 2:40pm Afternoon tea 3:10pm The business case for investment in development of precision livestock management technologies and applications Rod Dyer (Meat and Livestock Australia) ii 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium 3:30pm Does peer training facilitate adaption in young cattle relocated from the rangelands to a temperate agricultural grazing system Dean Thomas (CSIRO) 3:40pm Precision livestock production and environmental influences Graham Donald (CSIRO & UNE PARG) 3:50pm Translating industry research to farm profit improvement - a commercially viable approach to precision livestock and remote monitoring in Australia Chris Andrews (Taggle Systems) 4:00pm Bayesian change-point analysis of grazing sheep behaviour to identify lambing Robin Dobos (Industry and Investment NSW & UNE PARG) 4:10pm Symposium close 6:30pm Informal dinner – Wicklow Hotel iii 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium Table of Contents Foreword i Acknowledgements i Program ii Table of Contents iv Why does it matter where animals urinate? .....................................................................................1 Active Optical Sensors for grazing systems research.......................................................................2 GNSS monitoring of temperament variations in cattle ...................................................................3 Spatially enabled livestock management: increasing biomass utilisation in rotational systems ......................................................................................................................................................4 The state of the art in movement and behavioural modelling in ecology .................................5 Research directions in Northern Australia – the development of CSIRO’s Lansdown Research Station .....................................................................................................................................6 On saleyards and surveillance – using livestock movement records for risk-based surveillance planning .............................................................................................................................7 GNSS livestock tracking at the University of Sydney ........................................................................8 Linking GPS and satellite remote sensing to monitor animal behaviour and environmental Interactions ..............................................................................................................................................9 New tools in spatio-temporal grazing systems research .............................................................. 10 Understanding sheep grazing of complex native grasslands to better manage production and natural resource outcomes ....................................................................................................... 11 Spatio-temporal monitoring of sheep to investigate shelter and shade use .......................... 12 The business case for investment in development of precision livestock management technologies and applications ......................................................................................................... 13 Does peer training facilitate adaptation in young cattle relocated from the rangelands to a temperate agricultural grazing system? ..................................................................................... 14 Precision livestock production and environmental influences ................................................... 16 Translating industry research into farm profit: a commercially viable approach to precision livestock and remote monitoring in Australia. ............................................................................... 17 Bayesian change-point analysis of grazing sheep behaviour to identify lambing ................ 18 iv 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium Why does it matter where animals urinate? Keith Betteridge and Des Costall AgResearch Grasslands Palmerston North New Zealand Email: [email protected] Mitigating N losses from agricultural land in NZ is of paramount importance for maintaining the clean, green image. Livestock urine provides most of the leached N and ~25% of our GHG emissions as N 2O. But how does this vary spatially and temporally within paddocks, and does it matter anyway? Previous research has shown hugely variable N concentrations in urination events of individual cattle within and between days and between cows. Thus, we believe there is no such thing as “average urine” within or between species. As part of a larger programme we compared nitrogen leaching from sheep, cattle and deer grazed pastures. On those 0.4 ha, flat plots, N leaching from cow grazed pastures was nearly double that from ewes and hinds. But is this applicable to commercial hill country farms where stock are known