Ragwort! Thistle! Blackberry! Oh My!

Broadacre or Spotspraying, Drones can get to your steep or wet locations

Spot spraying

Spotspraying by drone dramatically reduces the use of herbicide by flying directly to each weed in your paddock and only spraying a small area around the weed. This can be single plants such as a thistle or a ragwort, or a cluster of flatweeds or Canadian thistles. To do this, a specialised drone initially flies over your paddock collecting hundreds of high resolution images that are fed into an AI program that identifies unwanted weeds and then produces a weed map. This map is uploaded to the spray drone, that then goes from one weed to the next, spraying only the area immediately surrounding the weed. Spot spraying saves money by using a fraction of the herbicide used in broadacre spraying as well as reducing the negative environmental effects of wide application of herbicides. Typical applications include blackberry, thistles, ragwort or clusters of capeweed with a broadleaf selective herbicide. The cost of is commonly on a per acre basis and in some cases might include an additional charge for weed mapping depending on how complicated weed identification is. For small or complicated areas with dense growths of weeds like blackberry, a half day rate is often applied (~ $350).

Broad Acre Spraying

Often spraying a complete area or paddock is more desirable because of the density of weeds, early stage of growth, spray-graze strategy, or the residual effects some herbicides provide. The DJI Agras T40 can spray as much as 15 hectares per hour in relatively open, flat terrain with few obstacles. In more complex areas with steeper hill sides, trees, other obstacles or higher rates of herbicide application this rate drops appreciably and can be as little as 5 Hectare per hour. In almost all cases we charge a simple flat fee per acre, recognising that most jobs have more complex slow areas and faster more simple areas. Examples of broad acre application include late fall/winter spraying of emergent broad leaf weeds such as Capeweed with a dilute 2-4-D based herbicide to encourage selective grazing by cattle. Winter growth stimulants such as Gibberellic acid are also commonly applied by broad acre methods.