StationSmart: data-driven practice change

Project duration: 2025–2026

Location: Victoria River District, Northern Territory

Overview

StationSmart is an extension focussed project that involves working alongside northern cattle producers to better understand the challenges they face when making changes in their management decisions. NT Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (NT DAF) Livestock Industries staff are working directly with stations to support practice changes that improve productivity, profitability, and land condition.

StationSmart aims to create a better understanding of the challenges producers face when adopting new tools or practices through collaborating with stations as they implement  management changes, and documenting the process to share learnings with the wider industry.

The project is funded by the Northern Hub and led by the Northern Territory Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Paddock Challenge Site

The focus of the project is a “paddock challenge” site on a commercial cattle station in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory. The producer has chosen a management change they want to implement, and the project team is supporting and documenting how they:

Find relevant tools and information → figure out how to best implement the change → put it into practice & collect data → assess the results and use them to make decisions.

The goal: improve production by removing non-performers

The change that the StationSmart collaborating property wants to implement is to improve weaning rates by removing non-performing breeders and better matching stocking rates to carrying capacities. Research shows that a percentage of breeders repeatedly get in calf but don’t bring that calf through to weaning. Identifying and removing these animals can lift overall herd performance — but it requires keeping track of individual animal performance.

To reach this goal, NT DAF and the StationSmart property will work in the following areas:

• Herd data – finding a way that works for the property to record pregnancy and lactation status at musters and use this data to make selection decisions
• Pasture  – Measuring pasture growth and land condition, and updating safe stocking rates.
• Technology use – Using GPS collars on cattle to track grazing patterns, land type use and water use. Then using this information to inform decisions on stocking rates.
• Staff – involving station staff in the whole process to ensure they understand the science behind the changes, and how to effectively implement new practices.

A year’s worth of data will be analysed by June 2026 to measure the progress made.

Benefit to industry

StationSmart will document experiences, benefits, and challenges that come from the paddock challenge and share these with industry. The project will also highlight areas of R,D&E that are difficult to implement or are not practical for northern cattle stations, which will be an important insight for research and extension staff.

For the wider industry, StationSmart aims to:

• Provide case-studies, producer insights and a paddock walk as a part of the paddock challenge.
• Improve extension material on topics that the practice change requires knowledge of, and identify information gaps.
• Gather feedback on tools used by the StationSmart property, and note areas for improvement.
• Encourage ongoing discussion amongst producers through regular updates from the project and StationSmart property.

Updates and results from the StationSmart project will be shared through FutureBeef.

If you are a producer wanting regular email updates, contact the project team to be added to the email list.

Project lead: Christie Pearson, NT DAF Livestock Industries. Christie.pearson@nt.gov.au |  08 8973 8476

This program received funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.