Good morning, growers!
A north-west Queensland cattleman reckons a $12,000 thermal drone has paid for itself in a year, according to coverage from Meat & Livestock Australia. He now musters on his own in about two hours. It used to take a chopper and two blokes on bikes. Fair dinkum, that's the kind of maths we like to see.
Australia
One Bloke, One Drone, One Muster
A Hughenden cattle producer says a thermal drone has cut his muster from a chopper crew to a solo morning.
Sam Fryer runs 300 breeders on 6,000 hectares. He used to pay for a helicopter (three hours at $500 an hour) plus two people on bikes. Now he sends up a DJI Matrice 4 thermal drone from SkyKelpie to push mobs towards water, then finishes the close work on his bike.
Fryer estimates the drone saved him about $20,000 in its first year. He says he hasn't missed a cow since, where he used to leave five to 10 head behind each muster. He's also clear it doesn't replace stockmanship, and he spends five days getting weaners used to the drone.
Island Cows Pick Their Own Milking Time
King Island Dairy is about a month off switching on a robot milking shed where the cows decide when they're milked.
The shed on the Bass Strait island runs a Lely system. Cows walk in whenever they like, every station tests the milk as it goes, and ear sensors keep an eye on each cow's health. Managing director Nick Dobromilsky told Pulse Tasmania a warmer-than-normal milk reading can flag a fever early, so a crook cow gets pulled out and checked sooner.
He says the robots won't mean fewer workers. Staff who spent around eight hours a day milking will spend more time in the paddock. He reckons only about 2% of Aussie dairies run robots, and expects the cows to take seven to 14 days to learn the system.
Lime Planning by Paddock
WA grain growers can now model lime plans across the whole farm using their own paddock data.
SoilPlan comes from agtech company AxisTech and grew out of the WA Farm Data Sharing project with DPIRD, Curtin University and the Grower Group Alliance. A whole-farm map colour-codes soil pH so you can see where acidity may be holding things back.
From there you can compare lime rates and application strategies paddock by paddock, with projected soil, production and financial outcomes over 20 years. Kojonup grower Kent Stone says it beats going through "a heap of paper" to work out where to go harder with lime.
Overseas
257 Bales and Nobody Driving
Vermeer's autonomous Bale Hawk carted 257 round bales in a 24-hour test, and only stopped because the paddock ran out.
The tracked machine finds bales with onboard sensors, rolls them on with loading tracks instead of a spear, and carries three at a time to a row you set. Vermeer was aiming for 300, Future Farming reports, but there were no bales left to grab.
That works out at about 10.7 bales an hour. Not fast, but it doesn't knock off. It's still a concept machine that's been tested in Iowa and nearby states, and Vermeer says it isn't for sale.
Cameras Riding the Pea Harvester
Oxbo is fitting harvesters with cameras that spot lost and split peas and tweak the machine on the go.
A prototype pea viner working in Perthshire, Scotland, carries five AutoHarvest cameras. Three watch for peas and pods going out the back or getting missed by the picking head. Two check the crop before and after cleaning, and the last one also picks out split peas so the system can ease off the threshing.
The tech is already on Oxbo's berry harvesters. Oxbo's UK sales manager Mark Croal told Farmers Weekly he expects pre-series pea machines with selected customers through 2027 and a full launch the year after, subject to change. No price yet.
One Robot for Planting and Weeding
France's Naïo has added a plug planter to its Oz vegetable robot, so one machine can plant a crop and then come back to weed it.
Naïo says the compact electric Oz now takes more than 35 implements, from plug planting and seeding to mechanical weeding, mowing and crop transport. RTK navigation lets growers reuse field maps between jobs.
The company claims up to eight hours of work and almost an acre a day. Its pitch is simple: tidy planting makes the weeding easier later. It's demoing the planter at FIRA USA in Yakima, Washington, from 20 to 22 October (US time).
Tech of the Week
Robot arms with cameras that find ripe fruit and pick it, so you're not chasing a full crew at the peak of the season. This month Korea's Beyond Robotics showed off PICKY, a two-armed strawberry picker, and Germany's eternal.ag put a tomato harvester on show at Tomatoworld in the Netherlands.
The Up Side: They don't need a smoko. eternal.ag says its Harvester can work up to 22 hours a day, and Beyond Robotics claims PICKY picks about 95% of berries in field conditions. Those are company figures.
The Down Side: Orchards are a lot harder than greenhouse rows. In Aussie orchard trials over the 2021 and 2022 seasons, Monash University's MARS apple picker got 62.8% of the apples it went for. PICKY isn't due to launch officially until January 2027.
Tech of the Week
Fruit Picking Robots
Robot arms with cameras that find ripe fruit and pick it, so you're not chasing a full crew at the peak of the season. This month Korea's Beyond Robotics showed off PICKY, a two-armed strawberry picker, and Germany's eternal.ag put a tomato harvester on show at Tomatoworld in the Netherlands.
The Up Side: They don't need a smoko. eternal.ag says its Harvester can work up to 22 hours a day, and Beyond Robotics claims PICKY picks about 95% of berries in field conditions. Those are company figures.
The Down Side: Orchards are a lot harder than greenhouse rows. In Aussie orchard trials over the 2021 and 2022 seasons, Monash University's MARS apple picker got 62.8% of the apples it went for. PICKY isn't due to launch officially until January 2027.
Paddock fail
Wigan farmer Wayne Erfmann set off at 5.30am for a workout at his gym in Leyland, 15 miles away, Wigan Today reports. When he walked out at about 7.15am, five of his hens were pecking around the car park. They'd bedded down under the skip on his lorry and ridden the whole way.
He caught two with food and came back with mates for another two. The fifth is still giving them the slip, and Erfmann reckons the gym might just keep it as a mascot.
Send us your best paddock fail if you have one.
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Out the Back / Sprayflyr