Hi Matteo,

DON'T use a GPS collar. Have a look at the following site with much cheaper  solutions and for multiple animals in a flock for example. These devices allow you to track the animals position as accurate as a GPS.

Site: http://www.atstrack.com/Type-3-Tracking-Mammals.aspx?gclid=Cj0KEQjws8qgBRCLp-aploLbqcQBEiQAm0rD5woOsGjHlQks8yVG3yTuHgHN4QOBXfbLoWJEtpExrVgaAoc-8P8HAQ

Cheers and success with your research.

Frank

Thank you very much. I'm going to check them immediately! 

For a completely different project I am working on, we need to track the movement of vehicles. To do this, we actually used cheap cell phones ($0.01 each for a 2013 Android based cell phone.) These have worked out pretty well. You don't need to activate the phones to get GPS data. (No cell service required.) You do need to set up a WIFI system to download the data when the sheeps are near the receiver. You also need to get someone to charge the batteries on the phones. That could be a bit of an issue.  

Thank you for your advise Andrew. As you said the recharging of the phoes would be an issue since sheep are going to graze mountain pastures. Of course there will be a shepherd, but I'm afraid there will be no electricity. 

Hi Matteo - I'm also interested in tracking individual sheep, so am wondering how you decided to do this in the end - any advice would be great.

thanks

Richard

Hi Richard, 

We had in the Department a GPS (Garmin 60CSx) that seems to work perfectly concerning the tracking. We managed to transfer the data in QGis without any particular problem except for the battery life which is very, very short. So I bought good rechargable NiMh battery and a 6000 mA external USB battery hoping that this will improve the lasting. Then I bought a dog collar, a hard-disk case and some waterproof bags. And that's how I crate my home-made collar (see the picture in attachment). 

However that's a temporary solution because we ordered professional GPS collars from Lotek.

Thanks - that's really useful! Which of the Lotek collars did you choose? Can you tell me approximately how much do these cost?

The model is Lotek 3300. For 3 collars, a battery charger and a data cable we spent 5200€ (without VAT). 

Thanks again Matteo. Good luck with your study. I think we will use GPS collars too, but, like you, I think the main issue for us is that we would like to quantify the individual movements of many sheep rather than just a few, so we need to think how best to do this. 

Hi. We have been using GPS collars for the past two summer foraging seasons on sheep in Norway with success...

Great Nicolai! Any kind of research outputs? Papers, pubblications...

Hi. I'm currently analysing Our data from the Field season 2012-2014 but there have been result from other studies from The Hol Project in Norway. Projects that have been running since 2001 in the same Research area. See e.g. Øystein Holand and Atle Mysterud for examples...

Thank you so much Nicolai, I really appreciate your info. 

Good luck for your research!