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AnonTechie writes:

Australian farmers managing cattle stations as large as some European nations will soon be able to monitor their cows and pastures from space as part of "groundbreaking" technology, scientists say. The technology, developed with government and private funding, taps into a satellite passing overhead to record the weights of herds daily while monitoring pasture conditions—a task traditionally impossible due to the stations' vast sizes and harsh, remote locations. Some stations, such as Newcastle Waters in the Northern Territory, span 10,000 square kilometres (3,861 square miles)—an area larger than Cyprus—and home to 55,000 cattle.

The technology exploits the stations' semi-arid conditions, which means there is little access to surface water with cattle having to walk to man-made watering points each day. A weighing platform that the cows—which each have an electronic tag—must step on is placed at the watering points and powered by solar panels, with the data fed to a satellite and then to a station manager's computer.

http://phys.org/news/2015-10-australian-technology-cows-weights-space.html

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