L.PDS.2109 - PDS - Providing Mineral Supplementation via Water
Water medication technology supplements cattle via trough water.
| Project start date: | 27 November 2024 |
| Project end date: | 30 August 2024 |
| Publication date: | 18 June 2024 |
| Project status: | Completed |
| Livestock species: | Grass-fed Cattle |
| Relevant regions: | Northern Territory |
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Summary
This PDS aimed to demonstrate water medication as an alternative method of providing supplements to cattle on extensive, commercial properties in northern Australia. Water medication technology supplements cattle via trough water. It can be controlled remotely and offers solutions to challenges of other forms of supplementation, such as wet-season paddock access and labour/time requirements. Two paddocks on a Barkly region property were selected, one was supplemented via the property’s usual method (dry lick) and the other via water medication. One hundred preg-tested in-calf heifers were put in each, and cattle performance, water and supplement intake, cost and cattle behaviour data were recorded. The PDS was successful in demonstrating that water medication was an effective method of supplementation. Multiple challenges throughout the PDS resulted in only one year of reliable data for analysis. Also, there were too many variables influencing this data to attribute differences in performance between treatments to the supplementation method alone. The key observations from the PDS were: cattle were successfully and safely supplemented with urea and phosphorus year-round using water medication, supplement and water intakes were able to be monitored remotely, and supplement dose rates changed via the online dashboard with minimal technical skill required, and surface water being available appeared to decrease visits to dry lick as much as it did water troughs.
Objectives
By May 2023, two participants will:
1. Demonstrate that year-round supplementation via water medication can be successfully implemented at a commercial scale without negatively impacting the productivity of young breeding females, using the performance measures of:
a. annual liveweight gain
b. heifer pregnancy
c. calf mortality and re-conception in first-lactation cows.
2. Demonstrate that water medication is an effective method of addressing phosphorus deficiency during the wet season, measured using plasma inorganic phosphorus.
3. Conduct a cost benefit analysis to determine the relative economic performance of automatic electronic water supplementation compared to the existing method of supplementation on individual properties.
4. Use GPS livestock tracking equipment to determine if there is a difference in the frequency that livestock access supplements during the wet and dry season.
5. Implement a series of skills and training development activities using a variety of platforms to increase the knowledge, skills and confidence of 20% of NT producers involved in the PDS.
6. One producer per region, in addition to the producer demonstrated sites will have adopted using medicated water to supplement cattle through the wet and dry season. Further adoption expected once results are calculated.
7. Conduct two field days to showcase the demonstration site results and encourage adoption of key practices.
Key findings
No data collected from the first year of the PDS could be used for analysis as the cattle had to be moved to other paddocks due to dry conditions part way through the year. Whilst cattle data was analysed for the second year, there were too many variables (eg. paddock differences) to attribute differences between treatments solely to the supplementation method without replication of the trial. Key observations were that the water medication technology worked well once set up, cattle supplemented via water were productive (there were no differences between treatments in pregnancy rate), and GPS data indicated that cattle may have visited the trough sooner after rainfall and more frequently than dry lick stations; so in this situation water medication may be an effective alternative to dry lick. Any challenges encountered with the water medication technology were overcome and other producers can learn from this experience.
Benefits to industry
This PDS was not able to provide a cost-benefit analysis of water medication, but it was able to compare the cost of water medication to dry lick supplementation, and found that the costs of the different supplementation methods were similar (the average cost per head for one year of supplementation was $23 for water medication and $21 for dry lick – although the cost of equipment was not included in the dry lick treatment). It also demonstrated how water medication can be integrated into pastoral operations. This PDS showed that the water medication technology used is safe (including for urea supplementation through the wet season), relatively simple, reliable and has improved greatly in recent years. The cattle behaviour data also indicated that, in this location, surface water (encouraging cattle to graze further from water points) may have an equal or bigger impact on dry lick visitation frequency than it does on supplement intake via trough water, which may be an opportunity for further research.
MLA action
MLA continues to deliver the Producer Demonstration Site (PDS) program, supporting livestock producers working in peer-to-peer groups to pursue new skills, knowledge and management practices applicable to their own commercial livestock production systems.
Future research
The inability of this PDS to compare the effects of the different supplementation methods on performance means that there may be opportunity for further research to collect more accurate cattle, cost and intake data from large scale commercial paddocks by using technology such as auto-drafters. Further research into the water and supplement visitation or intake behaviours of cattle would also be beneficial, looking at factors such as the effect of surface water on dry lick visitation, and preference of medicated trough water compared to dry lick.
More information
| Project manager: | Alana McEwan |
| Contact email: | reports@mla.com.au |
| Primary researcher: | Northern Territory Department Industry Tourism and Trade |
