Cattle Monitoring Drones
Farmers in countries like Australia and Israel have embraced UAV technology to radically transform how they take care of their livestock. From the comfort of their homes, farmers can now use aerial surveillance, high definition cameras and state of the art sensors to keep a close eye on the location, health and general well-being of their cattle. Here are a few reasons why using drones for monitoring dairy cattle is a great idea.
a) Finding Lost Or Stolen Cattle
Cattle in large farms sometimes wonder outside their owner’s property perhaps using a breach in the fence and this creates quite a headache for farmers trying to locate them over very wide tracts of land.
Cattle drones offer a significant advantage because they have the ability to surveil thousands of acres of land within a short period of time.
Thermal imaging sensors have the ability to detect the location of cattle across a broad range of landscapes that could pose a challenge for both human eyes and ordinary cameras and this is because thermal images can see through opaque objects like trees or bushes even if it is in the middle of the night.
Cattle thieves today have adapted to the use of RFID chips put inside animals for tracking in case of theft and so they use jamming equipment to block their emitted signals. Luckily however farmers can now search over thousands of hectares of lands using drones so that the task of finding their cattle is made infinitely easier.
b) Scaring Away Predator Animals
Coyotes lead the list of predators that eat the farmers livestock but they are also joined on the list by bears, mountain lions, and bobcats. Farmers can sometimes face legal action if they kill predator animals especially if they are an endangered species and so drones may provide a solution that not only keeps cattle safe but also spares the lives of animals just looking for a meal.
Large UAVs with loud propellers have been shown to be very intimidating to predators and so they provide a good way of scaring them off.
c) Cattle Herding
Farmers no longer have to leave their homes so as to direct cattle back to their pen because using a UAV is far easier and quicker. Nature designed sheep and cows to instinctively be afraid of anything foreign that might be a threat to them so they run the other way anytime a drone comes relatively close to them and this allows farmers to be able to keep cattle from wandering too close to dangerous places like cliffs.
d) Monitoring Of Ill, Injured Or Distressed Cattle
If an animal has been sick or injured and a farmer would like to keep a close eye on its condition without having to constantly go to its physical location then a good way to do this is by using a small and quiet drone designed to appear as harmless as a bird in order to get close enough to check on an animal’s condition without panicking it.
e) Production Efficiency
Farming is like every other business in the world in that its primary objective is profit. This means that any efficiency that can be utilized should be implemented even in the area of saving on labor costs.
Drones can radically reduce the number of workers a farmer needs to hire in order to herd cattle, monitor their bulk feeding as well as check on their well being and so lower labor costs means higher profits.
