In the middle of rural South Australia, a 12,140Ha (30,000-acre) sheep station runs completely unmanned – 2,000 sheep, no onsite manager, no bore runners, no homestead.
One hundred and fifty kilometres south in Port Augusta, member of the North West Sheep Meat Production Group in SA and the owner of the sheep, Jamie McTaggart, monitors the property daily from his office computer.
This pilot program is set to change the face of farming and has been developed jointly by Rural Solutions SA, a division of Primary Industries and Resources SA (PIRSA) and Stockman Telemetry Systems. Australian innovators, Observant Pty Ltd, was the first choice for the integrated remote monitoring system used in the pilot program.
By using the Observant Remote Management System™, Mr McTaggart checks the water levels in the troughs, watches the sheep walk into the yards via Observant’s ‘Troughcam’ for their daily drink, weighs each one on the way in, records the data on its tag reader and he can even remotely muster the sheep into yards by closing key gates. All with the click of a mouse.
It’s not the first Observant Remote Management System™ installed for Australian cattle or graziers using integrated digital camera, walk-over-weighing systems and radio signals instead of expensive phone lines, but it’s the first to be installed over such a great distance from the office to the property.
Typically, the maximum distance that UHF radio signals travel is 30 kilometres, but the addition of two repeater stations located strategically along the route means that data-intensive information such as photos and weight recordings can be relayed over 150 kilometres to the office base station in just a couple of minutes.
This innovative plug-and-play, low cost and easy to use hardware and software system has been designed and manufactured in Australia by Observant Pty Ltd. It’s simple enough for customers to run themselves, and they can call on local support from Stockman Telemetry Systems whenever they need to. Already there are Observant Systems in place at properties throughout Australia from the Pilbara region in Western Australia, Alice Springs in Northern Territory, Mt Isa in Queensland and Bourke in New South Wales, and that number is set to increase as graziers look for new ways to cut the cost of farming.
“For graziers, the key advantage is the huge amount you can save on labour and fuel,” says Daniel Schuppan from Rural Solutions SA, part of the project team trialling this first-of-a-kind pilot program.
“It cuts down on the number of bore runs you need to do by at least 50%, if not much more,” says Daniel.
Saving thousands of dollars and buckets of time.
With the price of fuel tipped to skyrocket soon, that’s good news for overstretched graziers. With little control over farm gate prices, productivity gains must come from the cost side of the equation.
Tim Stockman of Stockman Telemetry Systems, the local South Australian distributor and installer of Observant Systems, says that petrol prices are not the only production cost driving the demand for remote monitoring.
“Competing with the mining industry for staff is tough,” says Tim. “Station Managers just can’t even come close to matching those kinds of wages.”
“The benefits of monitoring water and pumps remotely have always been there – that’s the bread and butter stuff in terms of reducing labour costs. But now with the Observant System, we can do some higher level functions like walk-over weighing, tag reading, remote control gates and auto drafting.”
Once the system is in place, operating costs are low – and the benefits on the day-to-day running of the property are enormous.
“So for example, when it’s time to muster the paddock, rather than driving up there the day before with two blokes and two motorbikes and spending hours riding around trying to find the sheep, graziers like Mr McTaggart will be able to segregate the sheep when they come in for a drink and then drive up there himself and get the work done in a day,” says Tim.
“And if there is a problem, graziers will know about it straight away and they can send someone to deal with it quickly and effectively,” he added.
As well as the efficiency gains for graziers, the Observant System has numerous benefits for the environment. It gives natural resource managers the ability to monitor and manage feral animals and wetland pests in a controlled, humane manner, and of course reduces energy costs for graziers with lower fuel usage.
The South Australian North West Sheep Meat Production Group’s pilot program has been funded through the SA Arid Lands NRM Board with a grant from the National Landcare Program. It has been running since February this year and is expected to wrap up by December 2008. The Observant System is available through Stockman Telemetry Systems.
Contact details for Stockman Telemetry Systems
visit stockmantelemetrysystems.com.au
or email sales@stockmantelemetrysystems.com.au