Sorry, boy, herd you were replaced
Drone trumps dog for sheep muster
THE future of farming could be buzzing above a Beeac farm.
Merino sheep farmer and tech-hobbyist Bill Alston has taken the hard work and hazards out of mustering his sheep, now using a drone to bring his sheep from the paddock to the pen.
Mr Alston has been using a drone connected to a headset to muster sheep on his 6500-hectare farm for about two months, and says the new method has forever changed the way he farms.
“Ticks all round, it’s a fantastic machine. It works 10 times better than I thought it was going to work,” he said.
“We’re doing everything here by drone now. It’s much better for low stress stock handling; I can get them in and no sheep are panting when I get them into the yard.
“I’m just not out there on the bike risking myself bouncing over the paddocks with the motorbike, I can do it by air.
“There’s no downside to it whatsoever, it’s all plus, which is just fantastic.”
A hilly, difficult farm and interest in new technologies led to the Beeac farmer trying out drone mustering, a tactic he believes may be a worldfirst.
“I’ve done a lot of research on it and it looks like I’m the only one doing it with the VR goggles,” he said. “A lot of that is because of the terrain we have.
“Basically our farm is a bit unique with the way it’s just very volcanic and quite rough terrain. So it sort of took three of us on motorbikes to muster the sheep beforehand.
“Ever since drones came out I’ve played around with them and I always thought that one day we might be mustering by air, which would be fantastic around this country.
“Now I can basically just muster the sheep by air, I can get up and have a look around and see where they all are and just attack the paddock in the right way. And the sheep respond very well to the drone, they mob up quite well and move with the drone well.”
While the drone helps the farmers stay out of harm’s way during a muster, it has also made life easier for Pilch the kelpie. He can now skip the muster and stick to keeping things in order when the sheep are in the yard.
“He’s a fantastic dog in the yard,” Mr Alston said. “Out here with the dog, because it’s so hilly, the sheep are disappearing over the hill and the dog can’t work with the sheep like he could on a flat paddock.”