November 11, 2021
Year 9 and 10 STEM students at Saint Mary’s Catholic College in Kingaroy have been working on solutions for common problems faced by farmers.
Their projects ranged from creating systems to count cattle to adding nutrients to a water supply and removing phosphorus from water.
One group decided to take a different approach and tackled the growing problem of scrub bulls.
Students Lachlan, David, Riley, Dustin and Sidney realised that current methods of catching wild bulls were both difficult and dangerous.
Their aim was to create a solution that made the process easier and safer for those involved.
Their idea was to create a “cattle trap” that was big enough for the bull to walk through without getting spooked as well as making it strong enough to hold them.
They decided the best way to do this was to build a scaled prototype.
This included a system which had gates that would open and close, based on the beast’s position in the gate system. A gate would then move along a railing to push the bull into the final yard.
The students produced a functional prototype that showed the possibilities of using a trap to catch scrub bulls.
They identified some improvements they could make to increases the success of the trap.
