2. Materials and methods
Six herds of beef steers on five commercial properties
were observed during the hours of daylight in August and
September of two consecutive years. Due to the numbers
of animals in the herds and to the size and complexity of
the paddocks, observations during the hours of darkness
were impossible. The properties were all within a 70-km
radius of Trangie, NSW, Australia and details of the herds
and the properties are presented in Table 1. In each year,
three herds on three different properties were studied. In
the second year, one of the properties was the same as the
previous year, but with a different group of cattle.