Global navigation satellite system livestock tracking: system development and data interpretation

The use of global satellite navigation system tracking as a research tool for monitoring livestock activity is increasing. Commercial systems are being developed for the livestock industry. This paper reports on the development of a low-cost, store-on-board Global Positioning System collar suitable for large-scale deployment in livestock herds. A robust collar design that avoids the necessity of external cables has been designed and was tested on beef cattle in western New South Wales. Configured for alternating wake and sleep modes to conserve battery life, the collars obtained a positional fix on 99.9% of attempts. Numerous alternatives for presenting extracted data, based on average diurnal activity, mean daily velocity, Livestock Residence Index and dry sheep equivalent maps are introduced and discussed.