Stoney Creek Farm

Client

Stoney Creek is a 500-hectare farm located in Bathurst, NSW. Owned by Mick Willott, a part-time farmer who has been on the property for 15 years and is currently third generation in the area, this farm is home to 100 breeding cows and several hundred sheep. 

Opportunity

For a part-time farmer, managing a farm with livestock and multiple water tanks on a large property can be challenging. Mick needed a solution to save him time and assist him in running the farm more efficiently.

Stoney Creek farm is spread across a public road which splits the land in two. To help prevent Mick’s livestock from wandering onto the road, his paddocks are surrounded by 1,424 metres of electric fence, which requires constant monitoring.

Solution

To solve Mick’s water issue, we implemented our water monitoring solution onto his farm where sensors were installed in his water tanks and troughs. Since Stoney Creek doesn’t have phone connectivity across its land, Outcomex used LoRa technology to send data from the sensors to our IoT agriculture platform – Farmdeck. To enable this solution, our team set up a LoRaWAN gateway mounted on a tower and powered by a solar panel.

With our electric fence monitoring solution utilising sensors, Mick can look at the voltage level of his fences on Farmdeck at any given time and from anywhere. He knows that if the voltage goes below a certain threshold, he will receive an alert notification and can attend to the issue quickly, giving him peace of mind.

Additionally, Farmdeck’s vehicle tracking and quad bike roll over feature has been deployed onto two vehicles on Stoney Creek Farm. Using LoRa and GPS technology, sensors installed onto his utes and quad bikes detect location and movement. Mick can track the vehicles in real-time via his device. Working cooperatively with vehicle tracking, tilt sensors that detect when a bike has rolled over have been fitted onto Mick’s quad bikes. In case of a rollover accident, Mick and other workers will receive an alert, allowing them to promptly attend to the vehicle.

Impact

Our IoT solution for farming has helped Mick increase his productivity and ROI by removing the water run from his daily activities and by reducing the number of lost livestock through electric fences monitoring. It has also improved the safety on his farm through the vehicle rollover alerting. Most of all, it is saving him time so he can focus on strategic improvements like regenerative agriculture. Mick hopes new technologies like Farmdeck will help him achieve his ambition to leave his farm better than when he started.

To learn more about Farmdeck, visit www.farmdeck.com