What do sheep think about drones? That is definitely an interesting question to ask.  However, there is an ongoing experiment that seeks to answer that question and offer real-world applications of drones to check on crops and monitor livestock.  Dan Swafford, the leader of the project and a retired teacher mentioned that they first have to find out how animals will react to the drone buzzing around. His first round of tests was concluded recently with an aim to expose students to new ways of approaching farming.

The experiment included flying drones over a herd of sheep once a week for a period of five weeks. This involved flying at 75 feet above the ground and reducing by 10 feet every other time. One team flew the drones as the other watched the reactions of the sheep and noted scores on the scale of 1 to 5.

A score of 1 meant that sheep didn’t notice the hovering drone, while a 5 meant the flock ran away in distress.  The experiment was called off whenever the score reading was 5. However, after a couple of weeks, the scores generally went down and the sheep were not bothered by the drones. Swafford and his team haven’t published the results yet as they are still doing more tests before they draw a conclusion.

The experiment is primarily designed to see if drones could be a useful livestock monitoring and herding tool for farmers. The researchers added that it’s also a great way to involve the ordinary farmer with new technologies.

Swafford remembers growing up as a geeky child in Missouri on a livestock farm. He was very interested in technology and science.  Swafford eventually moved off of the family farm, and joined a university to earn his master’s degree and started out as a teacher in 1974. He later joined Christiansburg High School to teach agriculture in 1989 and stayed until 2014.

Swafford currently works for the Virginia Cooperative Extension on a part-time basis. Virginia Cooperative Extension is an educational outreach program that sponsors his visits to schools where he organizes 4-H clubs in an effort to excite kids about agriculture and farming.

As he went about his teaching and agricultural outreach activities, he teamed up with scientists at Life Sciences and the Tech’s College of Agriculture. They had read about research scientists in Texas who had tested how drone flying affected cattle. And that’s how they come up with an idea of trying the same experiment on different species to see how they can be used on farms.  Drone farming is already a reality, and drone herding just may be right around the corner.

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