{"id":60387,"date":"2021-08-11T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=60387"},"modified":"2021-07-28T15:26:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T20:26:45","slug":"skys-the-limit-for-drones-on-the-ranch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=60387","title":{"rendered":"Sky’s the limit for drones on the ranch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Kacie Timmons<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special to Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drones are being utilized in every sector of the economy and increasingly in agriculture. Second, only to construction, agriculture is one of the largest industries that has adopted many new drone technologies. Able to capture monumental amounts of data while using less labor, drones are helping farmers and ranchers increase the efficiency of their operations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unmanned aerial\nvehicles have become very popular in agronomy because of their ability to take\npictures and collect data that can be transformed into yield and vegetation\nmaps. This information assists farmers in making decisions on what fertilizers,\nherbicides, or pesticides to apply. The beef industry has been slower to\nintroduce this technology even though drones have many practical applications on\nthe ranch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the ability\nto create aerial maps of pastures, ranchers have access to information on plant\nheight, plant health, weather damage, and can identify which areas of a pasture\nare the most heavily grazed. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data\ncan help ranchers assess what their forage and grasses are lacking in nutrients\nto be able to make better management decisions to benefit the nutrition their\nlivestock are receiving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect of\nrangeland management that can benefit from UAV use is controlled burns. Many\ndrones can have a near-infrared camera attached that will detect heat from the\nfire and make it easier for the flames to be monitored. The drone will allow\nthe fire boss to see through the smoke to see how fast the fire is moving and\nmake sure it stays within its prescribed area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NIR cameras can\nalso detect body heat from lost cattle or animals hidden in heavy brush and\nremote areas. In regions where cattle rustling is prominent, ranchers will use\nNIR technology to be better protected against trespassers and thieves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An extra set of\neyes in the sky can assist in monitoring livestock, fence lines, and water\nsources. Ranchers can survey pond and water tank levels without having to step\nfoot into the pasture. For feedlot owners, managing yard inventory is a large\npart of daily operations that requires significant time and labor. Drones can\nautomate the cattle counting process with software that can take one still\nimage and accurately identify the number of animals in a pen in a timely manner\nwithout disturbing or adding stress to the cattle. One business that offers\nthis service to producers, lenders, and auditors is Crop Quest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Producers can more\nclosely monitor cattle health and calving activity with a high-quality camera able\nto zoom in from a distance and read ear tag numbers. In the future, Dr. John\nChurch at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, foresees many ranchers\nusing drones with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in their\nherds. Each individual animal could be outfitted with an RFID tag and by\ninputting that tag number into a drone, it would be able to identify their\nlocation and activity. Kevin Kester, a past president of the National\nCattlemen’s Beef Association even uses his DJI drone to herd his cattle in\nremote places. The whirring from the propellers doesn\u2019t scare the cattle, just\ncauses them to gently move away from the noise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the main\nlimitations of drones is their short flight time due to battery restrictions as\nmost drones cannot fly for longer than 30 minutes at a time. Wind can also\naffect UAV flights and the max wind resistance for most drones is 18-24 mph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of a drone for aerial surveillance to improve management decisions is considered commercial use, so therefore the drone will need to be registered with the FAA and the pilot will need to get an FAA Part 107 license by taking an electronic knowledge test at an accredited testing center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are\ninterested in implementing drone technology on your ranch, the biggest question\nto ask yourself is \u201cWhat do you want the drone to be able to do?\u201d Knowing this\nwill help you find a cost-efficient drone that can be outfitted with the\ncorrect sensors to gather the data you want. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest\nchallenge that drone technology presents producers is the ability to interpret\nand analyze all the information that is collected. A high-quality agriculture\nsoftware program can transform all that data into usable facts and figures.\nThere are many brands that offer agriculture packages and software programs\nincluding DJI, AgEagle, Precision Hawk, Drone Deploy, and Barger Drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While drones\ncannot take the place of solid animal husbandry, they can still make the daily\nlives of a rancher simpler and the operations on their ranch more efficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kacie\nTimmons, a 2018 Smith Center High School graduate, graduated this spring with a\nBachelor of Science in agriculture business from Fort Hays State University.\nShe is the daughter of Glenn and Pamela Timmons, Smith Center. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kacie Timmons Special to Tiger Media Network Drones are being utilized in every sector of the economy and increasingly in agriculture. Second, only to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,3398,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-campus-news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Timmons-Kacie-Jo.jpg?fit=2697%2C4046&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60390,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60387\/revisions\/60390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}