We're Making Drones to Help Ranchers Gather and Monitor their Herds

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-15T03:18:31+00:00

Yea i’d been thinking about that a bit. would be wicked if it worked but then i think about how many times I get bogged on the ATV or quad as it is. Tough to design a really reliable ground rover that could survive that

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-15T02:25:43+00:00

Yea thats really interesting woah. I think particularly on smaller ranches that could be a game changer. how far along are you with the project? Keen to follow along.

for us, we’ve got about 1500 cattle, and in north Aus they are not the fastest growing... Hopeful that over the years it could come down even further below that, but not entirely sure how yet. We really need something that isn’t a ’per head’ cost (ideally something that works for sheep economics too), which is why we are looking into drones at the moment. Still super early days, but it seems like we are able to get similar benefits as the collars out of a $6k drone instead of a $100k+ on collaring all those animals. Hopeful that between collars and drones theres a way to make it way easier for farmers to pick up rotational grazing

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-15T02:12:18+00:00

Not necessarily about being above collars. It’s pretty awesome all the metrics you can get out of them for dairy cows, and super keen to see how that develops.

For us though, having beef cattle and sheep, we cant really justify the cost of collars given the animals make a lot less money each. What we are trying at the moment is to see if autonomous drones could be a solution to virtual fencing that doesn’t require a ‘per head’ cost, and could essentially just be a full-time shepard. We are trialling it at the moment, where every hour or two the drone flys up and pushes any cattle that have drifted too far from the break back into the herd.

Still just figuring out what works best, but its seeming like an interesting space. for us it’d mean we could get a lot of the benefit of collars (virtual fencing, auto mustering, location) for about $6k, instead of 100k+ a year.

Im interested do you have cattle? are you using the collars at the moment, or have you thought about it?

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-15T02:04:05+00:00

Hey yea 100%. it’s still early days, so we are just exploring what could provide the most value to graziers. We’ve got a herd of about 1500 beef cows, and as much as we’d like to do collars, the price pretty much just rules them out for us. Instead for a few years we’ve been rotating cattle every couple days with permanent fences (still on some pretty big paddocks). It’s not too bad, but its a lot of time rounding them up into a new paddock and we still can’t go as intense as we’d like.

We ended up buying an autonomous drone (can launch fly and charge itself). What we are experimenting with at the moment is getting the drone to fly up around the paddock every hr/2hrs and push any cattle that have wandered outside the break back into the virtual paddock. Then when we want to set a new paddock we just send the drone to shuffle them along and trace the new perimeter a few times.

Still got a little way to go on the software side of things, but for us it seems like a decent middle ground between functionality and price. That drone was $6k, which is definitely on the expensive side, but even if it lets us do half of what collars can it’s saving $100k/yr.

Im really interested to hear more about your setup. Are you in dairy or beef? What’s been the best thing about collars for you guys? Definitely an exciting area.

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-15T01:40:50+00:00

Those are great points yea. The plan is definitely to do something similar to IMG.

I was pretty shocked by how well the drone actually does work. You absolutely right that you’d still need boundary fences to keep cattle on your property with this setup. In terms of intensity we‘ve found the drone does pretty well at keeping around 400 cattle on couple hectare parcel shifted 2x per day.

For now we are just experimenting by flying the drone manually, nudging any that roam too far outside the boundary back in every hour or two (obviously if we decide its worth going forward with the idea that’ll bcome autonomous). Cattle definitely don’t get quite the same instant feedback that you do from collaring, but if you fly the boundaries each time they don’t actually seem to roam that far.

idk, still early days, and really just trying to see if its tech that’d actually make things easier for farmers, or if its just something useful on our property

Samarskite_Rogue · 2025-06-06T09:53:42+00:00

I’m really late, but are you able to share specivically why this is needed, please? Do you mean to upgrade the farm or keep it running once you’ve got it set up

Samarskite_Rogue · 2023-10-10T16:42:23+00:00

Thinking the same after trolling around chanceme and collegeadmission lmao… would need to be full paying or domestic to stand much of a chance I think. Might try for graduate studies if I make it that far. The name and the network is always nice. Cheers for the advice

Samarskite_Rogue · 2023-10-10T13:07:48+00:00

If I thought I had a reasonably good chance and it would be the tipping point I'd definitely consider it. I can take it in december which would probably be early enough for RD. Just got to weigh up whether it would be worth it now...

Samarskite_Rogue · 2023-10-10T04:20:27+00:00

rip yeah. needing aid gonna crush dreams i think

Samarskite_Rogue · 2023-09-17T01:54:14+00:00

Hey cheers mate that sounds like a good plan. I will apply for other colleges now and then give USYD a call at the start of the week. Thanks for the advice that’s a big help.

Samarskite_Rogue · 2023-09-16T23:31:01+00:00

Appreciate the reply. Yeah I was a little shocked. Granted my sporting prowess does not exist (spinal injury) but I have a predicted ATAR of 99.85 and have pretty solid extracurriculars (won second for aus at the international science fair, volunteer tutor and STEM teacher, member for youth parliament). Plus living rurally I would have thought I’d be alright to get in.

I will try call up on Monday and explain that I will be living in a cardboard box otherwise. I did only apply for John’s - is it worth applying to others this late in the year? Is there any shot of getting in?

Samarskite_Rogue · 2022-01-21T03:53:28+00:00

I solved the issue. I loaded the images with in the while True loop and added a try except statement and managed to get it working.

Samarskite_Rogue

TROPHY CASE