Does wearing remote monitoring technologies alter livestock behaviour in extensive grazing systems?

Abstract

The use of GPS and accelerometers to facilitate indirect measurement of livestock behaviour is becoming more common. However, caution is required to ensure that wearing the respective equipment does not alter behaviour. Two experiments investigated the behaviour of cattle (n=12 Angus heifers aged 8 months) and sheep (n=8 Merino wethers aged 2-4 years) wearing a UNEtracker GPS unit (PARG, Armidale) attached to the neck via a collar and an IceTag3D accelerometer (IceRobotics, UK) attached to the rear leg via a Velcro strap.