Copters vs. Canines - They’re Using Drones to Herd Sheep

First they supplanted secretaries, factory workers and store clerks. Now robots are setting their sensors on one of the world’s oldest jobs: herding sheep. Michael Thomson says his homemade drone is the fastest way to move the roughly 1,000 sheep on his sister’s spread in Dannevirke, New Zealand, to greener pastures. Workers on the 200-acre ranch typically have used horses or all-terrain vehicles to herd the animals and check on their condition. Those all are tasks his quadcopter, a helicopter with four rotors, can do in a fraction of the time, says Mr. Thomson, 22 years old. “There are limitations, but you don’t have to get on a horse, you don’t have to feed it,” Mr. Thomson says. “Just give it more batteries.” Tech-savvy livestock farmers from the Australian Outback to the Irish countryside are starting to use drones as a relatively cheap alternative to the cowboy and the sheepdog. Camera-wielding copters that can be bought off-the-shelf for as little as $500 can cover hilly terrain quickly, finding and guiding sheep and cattle while the rancher operates remotely—sometimes wearing goggles that show the drone’s perspective. Farmers in the U.S. and elsewhere are flying sensor-equipped drones over their crops to gather data on the plants’ size and health. And ranchers are using unmanned aircraft to count livestock, locate animals scattered across large properties and even spot which cattle are sick or in heat using thermal sensors. In the Australian Outback, many ranches use helicopters to herd cattle that roam areas of up to 1 million acres. Jack Hurley, one of those pilots, says he knows drones will replace him once their battery life improves, so he is trying to build such a device today. Mr. Hurley’s colleague, Ross “Rossy Rotor” McDowell, is confident that his job is safe. It sometimes takes him 10 hours to muster several hundred cows over thousands of acres. Drones “need to have at least three-hour endurance before there are any breakthroughs,” said Mr. McDowell, who has a pink two-seat chopper. “But they’re handy for getting maverick cattle from one yard to another, when it’s bloody dangerous to get in there with them.”...more