Researchers in central Queensland are trying to work out whether cows make friends, in a bid to boost reproductive rates in northern Australia's beef industry.

Professor Dave Swain from Central Queensland University in Rockhampton is leading research that uses tracking devices to monitor the social and group behaviours of cattle.

"We are really focused on reproductive performance and I guess reproduction is a very social event," he said.

"It involves cows and bulls coming together, but we are also exploring things like maternal behaviour and how cows are looking after their calves."

Professor Swain said they were "pretty excited" by some of the results they have been getting.

He has been using a variety of technologies to harness information on social behaviour at the Belmont Research Station, just north of Rockhampton, owned by the rural lobby group AgForce.

He said the dairy industry was already using daily performance measures to increase production, but that the beef industry had some unique challenges.

"The big goal here is we want to lift reproductive rates across the northern beef industry and we think the only way to really do that is to get better information about their daily reproductive status," he said.

Special social interaction collars

Professor Swain has been attaching what he called social interaction collars to the cattle to trace their every move. The collars can store several weeks' worth of information.

He said one of the interesting findings had been that when cows were calving they tended to spend time with other mothers that had calves of the same age.

"It is a little bit like when you go to your mother and toddlers' group - you get in with a group of mums and you sort of stick with them all the way through as your kids go all the way through junior school and high school," he said.

Professor Swain is leading research about the social and group behaviours of cattle in the beef industry. ( ABC News: Marlina Whop )

He said the social interaction collars were a research tool, but he was working on ways to make the technology more cost-effective and thus more widely available.

"We are using some location-based technology, which is ear tag-based," he said.

"We are able to track animals around the landscape and get feedback every 10 minutes.

"Now while this is a little like GPS, it is a bit different and uses radio transmission signals and a series of antennas to get the location and that is more cost-effective and practical than the research collars."

The collars and tags were also being used in conjunction with radio frequency identification ear tags (RFIDs) that were part of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) and combined with a walk over weighing system.

"When we have got an RFID reader at a watering point, we can actually use the associations as they come to water, and use the time difference between individual animals as a measure of social interaction," Professor Swain said.

"The team are looking for producers that want to start working with the university to test and refine the NLIS mothering up system."

Need to embrace new technology, AgForce says

AgForce chief executive Charles Burke praised the work of Central Queensland University.

"Once upon a time just to have a good eye for cattle and know how to breed cattle was important - it still is - but now we have to do far more," he said.

"We need to embrace new technology, we need to embrace business systems.

"It is exciting but it's also an acknowledgment of the evolving market that people are looking for ... when they eat a nice piece of beef out of central Queensland they can be assured that it is being produced under the best possible circumstances."