Imagine standing in a red fire ant bed for 10 minutes to get a free ice cream cone. Most likely you will be stung several times and it will be a pretty good incentive not to be there. Well, that is the best way Dr. Andy Herring, associate professor of animal science and food technology at Texas Tech University, can describe why they are studying the effects red imported fire ants (RIFA) have on livestock.

"We are trying to find out if the concentrations of fire ants really affect how the cow acts in the pasture, how they spend their time and if they stay away from areas that are really dense in fire ants," Herring said.

To determine the affects RIFA have on beef cattle, there must be an estimate on the number of RIFA in the pasture where cattle are grazing. To make this estimate, there is a grid set up in the pasture containing 24 cells. The cells are established utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS) software in conjunction with a map of the pasture with a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) unit.

"By doing this we know where each of the cells in the pasture are located, and then we can measure the RIFA mound density and activity in each cell to get an estimate of the number of RIFA in each cell and the pasture as a whole," Galen Austin, a graduate student in animal science and food technology at TTU, said.

"We must also know when the cattle are grazing and when they are not," Austin said.

To find this information, a vibracorder is used, which is an instrument that contains a clock and a chart that is placed around the neck of the grazing animal. The chart is synchronized with the clock so as long as the animal has its head down grazing, the chart will be marked and will indicate the day, time of day and how long the animal is grazing.

To find where the animal is located, a GPS unit, similar to the hand-held GPS unit used to map the pasture, was developed to attach to the cattle. The cattle GPS units were developed with assistance from Gerry Creagor in the network engineering depart- ment at Texas A&M University. The GPS units provide a positional location of the animal on the earth in latitude and longitude by utilizing radio signals
received from satellites orbiting the earth.

With the cattle tracking GPS system, the data points (in latitude and longitude as well as time of day) that are collected by each GPS unit in an animal are corrected for inherent errors and then relayed by radio signal to a remote base station that automatically downloads the data to a computer.

"By doing this we have the data points the instant they are collected, and we do not have to do any post-processing of the data to eliminate the inherent errors," Austin said.

Once all of the different sources of data are collected, they are combined to determine when the cattle were grazing, at what location and what the estimated number of fire ants were in the grazing location.

"By combining all of the data, we can deduce if fire ants have an affect in the grazing behavior of cattle," Austin said.

A survey that was conducted in the early 1990’s showed that the Texas cattle industry loses over $60 million each year due to fire ant problems.

"We know that there are differences in fire ant location, but whether or not they actually effect livestock, we don’t know," Herring said. "That’s why we are conducting this research."