Do sheep follow where the wind blows? It's the question a Charles Darwin University (CDU) Honours student is trying to answer in a project exploring the impact of wind direction and speed on the grazing patterns of sheep.
Samantha Connor is in the final stages of this Honours project, which also examines how wind affects the behaviour of sheep around watering points in a paddock.
Ms Connor, who is a student at CDU's Research Institute for Northern Agriculture (RINA), is conducting the research on sheep in the South Australia arid zone, with the goal to better understanding how to manage and improve grazing and make informed decisions about infrastructure such as watering points.
"We use GPS collars, and we put them on sheep in a 13,000-plus acre paddock out in arid pastoral zones," Ms Connor said.
"They have a central watering point and we're looking at their movements over about three weeks.
"This project is mainly focused on looking at the wind conditions. Do sheep walk into the wind, and if so what others factors influence this? Does temperature, rainfall or varying pasture attributes across the paddock play a role?"
More than half of South Australia is arid land, which is primarily used for pastoralism. Sheep and cattle stations consume more than 400,000 square kilometres of this land and is subject to irregular rainfall and other episodic weather events.
Despite weather conditions being a critical component of pastoralism, Ms Connor explained there was little research in this area.
"I started working on pastoral stations when I finished university a few years ago, and I noticed every time we'd go mustering, we muster according to what the wind's doing," Ms Connor said.
"If the wind is coming in from the south-west, we'll muster from the north to south because the animals want to be drawn there anyway.
"When I started looking into the literature, there's a mention of wind, but it's never been looked into. There's been no found scientific measure put on it."
Ms Connor is in the process of finalising her thesis, with the project being supervised by RINA Associate Professor of Sustainable Pastoral Systems Beth Penrose.
The student, who grew up in Melbourne and is now living in South Australia, had explored studies and careers with animals for years, until settling on pastoralism after working on a sheep station for the first time in New South Wales.
"I want to connect farmers and industries and make sure everyone's working together," Ms Connor said.
"Across the farms I've worked at, I've seen so many different environments and issues and I found they all need to talk together. They need to connect.
"It wasn't until I did this project, I met people who do this, connecting farmers to technologies and to research bodies, and this is what I want to do."
Impact of wind direction and wind speed on the grazing behaviours of sheep in arid environments is supported by the South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board.
It was also supported by the SA sheep fund in conjunction with a South Australian Research and Development Institute project.
