It’s the question a Charles Darwin University 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 the project, which also examines how wind affects the behaviour of sheep around watering points in a paddock.
Ms Connor 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?”
Despite weather conditions being a critical component of raising livestock, Ms Connor said 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,” she 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, 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 NSW.
“I want to connect farmers and industries and make sure everyone’s working together,” she 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.”
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