Satellite ear tags protecting livestock at Kevin Butler's farm

Kilmore East sheep producer Kevin Butler was the victim of livestock theft in December last year, losing 400 lambs, equivalent to $50,000.

"We know that stock theft is endemic," he said.

"It goes from the simple bloke who jumped the fence to pinch a calf, to a highly-sophisticated network of ringers, drovers to abattoirs.

"But no one can pinpoint it, the courts and the police won't and can't support us, because the legislation is not there."

As a key voice in strengthening farm security, Mr Butler arranged the field day to encourage farmers to embrace emerging technology, including CERES satellite ear tags.

The tags can monitor animal movement from anywhere, and Mr Butler hopes to see clusters of farmers connected throughout the network to help protect each other.

"It's like Find Your iPhone for animals," he said.

"I personally believe if this is embraced throughout the whole Australian community we will bring stock theft on its knees within six months to three years, which is absolutely amazing.

"The clusters would work as different sets of livestock with satellite tags to track and monitor stock, where neighbours and farmers across similar regions would be alerted to large movements.

"You can see your own sheep and your neighbour's sheep 100 kilometres down the road, or if you don't want them to have that information, you can cut that off simply by the way that you set up your app."

CERES co-founder and Queensland beef farmer David Smith came up with the idea as he wanted to better understand the lifestyle habits of his stock, better protect them from wild animals and theft, and be able to comfortably spend more time away from watching the paddocks to spend more time with his family.

"I don't want [the livestock] to get attacked by wild animals, or get killed and I want to be able to detect all of that and understand how they're utilising the land," Mr Smith said.

"We can understand where [the livestock] is moving across, otherwise they just go to the sweet spots and those bits get better and better but if you can manage them, so they use all of it, more of it can be productive.

"It's good for the animals, it's good for the environment, it's good for the farmers and it's good for the consumers, and we realised that if we're going to do this properly, we have to do a direct to satellite system.

"By putting the sensor up in the sky we have full supply chain traceability."

But beyond the use of CERES tags, Mr Smith encourages farmers to utilise other options to protect themselves.

"It's not just our technology for this, you've got to put up signs, cameras and I'd suggest you work together as a community," he said.

"You've got to do it all through the mitigation process, but this technology is certainly one of those."

Victorian Farmers Federation Livestock Group president Scott Young has also called on more action to be taken to stop livestock theft.

Mr Young said many thefts went unreported, meaning enormity of the problem could not be seen at its full scale.

"Farmers maintain the highest possible animal welfare standards and crimes such as livestock theft potentially risk the harm of animals, improper methods of handling those animals and transporting those animals," he said.

"The key that we need to take out of this as farmers is that we need to take responsibility for ourselves to ensure that we've got deterrence there."

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Mr Young said deterrence could be through ear tags, locked farm gates and better signage, but that it would take better involvement.

Along with being able to trace the movements of livestock, Mr Butler wants to see more people reporting theft, whether it's from a jerrycan of diesel or having 400 lambs disappear as he'd experienced.

He's spoken to farmers who won't report minimal losses, such as a can of diesel or a single calf recently birthed.

"We've got to report it when you know that there's a theft, which I call 'CROPS', Consistently Reporting Obvious Pilfering of Stuff," he said.

"We've got to stay consistent because you can see the police feel at times that we're not doing our part and we've got to change that psyche."