Have you ever wondered how sheep go about grazing in Mallee paddocks?
Mallee Sustainable Farming (MSF), Birchip Cropping Group (BCG), the University of New England (UNE) and the Mallee Catchment Management Authority (Mallee CMA) have recently joined forces to track a mob of 200 ewes while grazing a 265 acre paddock at Nandaly. Tracking will occur while sheep are grazing stubbles in summer, and again when grazing a forage crop in winter.
Within the flock, 25 sheep have been fitted with customised collars with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars which will stay on the sheep for the duration of grazing. This data will then be downloaded and analysed to assess intensity of grazing across the paddock as well as other factors such as identifying camping sites.
One of the aims of the project is to relate grazing intensity to changes in groundcover to provide farmers with better guidelines for maximising grazing potential without reducing groundcover below the critical 50% threshold. Therefore, to support the livestock tracking data, intensive sampling of feed availability, feed quality and groundcover levels is being undertaken every 10 days. The paddock has also been intensively mapped to establish paddock zones using electromagnetic mapping (EM38), historic NDVI and elevation.
It is anticipated that the information produced by this research will in the future help farmers design and implement improved grazing management systems. This may include cell grazing, virtual fencing ( a technology on the horizon), real time grazing monitoring and water point stratification. This type of data could also be used in the future to quantify livestock distribution of nutrients which could improve paddock management and refine fertiliser inputs.
