Using Drones to Manage Pasture

FEATURE SPONSORED BY AGRI SPRAY DRONES

There aren’t a lot of row crops around West Plains, Missouri. The cattle country that makes up the area more closely resembles timber clearings than the wide-open spaces of the Flint Hills of neighboring Kansas.

“Where we’re at, it’s about 99.9% pastureland for forage and hay, and it’s small. We don’t have these huge plots of wide-open land; there’s a lot of 40-to- 60-acre pastures that can be tough to get to,” says Blake Crow, owner of Crow Land and Cattle, West Plains, Missouri.

The topography of the area and the need to manage those smaller, difficult to access pastures helped to plant the seed of technology for Crow and his son Dakota. The two purchased an Agras T-30 from Agri Spray Drones in Centralia, Missouri, this past spring.

“There’s a lot of these pastures that need to be sprayed, but they’re harder to get to or guys just don’t want to spend the money on a sprayer, and the nearest helicopters are in Springfield (Missouri) and Jonesboro (Arkansas) and have a 350-acre minimum,” says Crow. “Time is another big issue; it takes a lot of time to spray pastures and that’s where we are hoping to come in. We can have them covered in a couple of hours,” Crow says of he and Dakota’s plans to offer custom spraying solutions beginning in 2023.

The Agras T-30 can cover around 35 acres per hour at a 2 gallon per acre rate and has already found a home on the operations of many row crop farmers.

“Pastures are usually at the bottom of the list for custom application, and they have a lot more ditches than crop fields. Drones can get everything done for a pasture that a sprayer can at a lower cost of operation, and it has more application than just spraying,” says Agri Spray Drones owner and founder, Taylor Moreland who founded the company as a resource for his seed business customers who struggled with timely fungicide application.

Moreland says that mapping an application area with the remote on the drone is easy to do and adds that what he and his team offers isn’t just the sale of a drone, but the total support and education in how to help a farmer or rancher get the most use and efficiency out of their investment. Through testing and research, the Agri Spray Drones team is finding new opportunities for drones on the farm and ranch every day.

Currently, the team is working on a wetlands project that encompasses a full section. The area is inaccessible for ground application and has pockets of phragmites reeds that need to be removed.

“The plan is to map the 640 acres and then use software to identify and mark those areas with phragmites that need sprayed. Out of the 640 acres, less than five percent of the area needs sprayed. So, we’ve got the area mapped out and we’re ready to go in with the drone; it will go to each one of those mapped spots and spray just those weeds that we have identified that need sprayed,” Moreland says.

Additionally, Moreland says that the T-30 has been used for everything from evenly spreading bentonite in a pond that is leaking to applying fly spray on cattle.

MANAGING FOR RESULTS

In pasture management and row crop application, most operators use only the mapping tool on the drone they purchase and find the best efficiency in flying back and forth across the field, but Moreland says that there is tremendous value in using a drone for spot spraying applications.

“When it comes to patch management, there is a lot of opportunity to manage weeds and invasive species, especially those that can be easily identified like thistles, cut leaf teasel, cedars and in the southwest, mesquite and cacti,” he says. “The control you can get with a drone on those species will be very significant.”

The monetary savings of implementing a spray drone, of course, comes from not having to pay to have those acres sprayed with a ground rig or by aerial application, but the long-term value of incorporating a spray drone is invaluable as additional software and hardware options continue to create opportunities to use the drone in additional ways.

For the Crow family, in addition to managing invasive and unwanted species in their pasture and hay ground, the father-son team plan to interseed cover crops and red clover in the fall via the spreader that can be purchased for the drone.

“We’re still in the learning curve phase of operating the drone and figuring out everything we can use it for,” Blake says. “Our plan for the seeder is to use it to put in some cover crops and interseed some clover into pastures, and that’s something we are looking to do for others in our area, as well when we get going next year.”

The indirect opportunity drones create is bringing the next generation back to the farm and creating business in rural communities across the countryside – development Moreland is passionate about.

“Everything we do is to help farmers and ranchers be more successful and efficient. If we can help grow that efficiency into a business in a rural area where it didn’t exist before, that’s what we want to do,” he says. “We see these drones as opportunities to bring the next generation back to the farm and bring a revenue stream with them, that’s why our monthly trainings aren’t just about picking up a drone and learning to operate it. We talk about all the other components you’ll need to be successful and realize that we won’t cover every scenario or problem that can occur – that’s why our technical support and drone parts are always a phone call away.”

If you’re interested in learning more about spray and spreader drones, the Agri Spray Drones team can be reached at 573-519-5000 or by visiting www.agrispraydrones.com.