Popular search terms
  • Biosecurity toolkit
  • Contact us
  • What is biosecurity?
  • Farm Biosecurity Program
  • Plant pest responses
  • Animal disease response
  • Farm profiler
  • Toolkit
  • Subscribe
  • About
    • About the Farm Biosecurity Program
    • Emergency animal disease responses
    • Emergency plant pest responses
  • Essentials
    • Farm inputs
    • Farm outputs
    • Ferals & weeds
      • Wild dog biosecurity
    • People, vehicles & equipment
    • Production practices
    • Train, plan & record
    • Videos
  • Toolkit
    • Gate sign
    • Create your own biosecurity kit
    • Declarations
    • FarmBiosecurity app
    • Manuals
    • On-farm biosecurity planning
    • Records
  • Crops
    • Cotton
      • Cotton best management practice
      • Cotton product management
      • Cotton pests
    • Feed mills
    • Fruit & nuts
      • Fruit & nut pests
        • Apple and pear pests
        • Avocado pests
        • Banana pests
        • Cherry pests
        • Citrus pests
        • Mango pests
        • Nut pests
        • Papaya pests
        • Summerfruit pests
      • Fruit & nut product management
    • Grains
      • Grains pests
      • Grains product management
      • Grain storage options
    • Honey bees
      • BeeAware website and newsletter
      • Code of Practice and National Bee Biosecurity Program
      • Honey bee glossary
      • Honey bee product management
      • Honey bee pests
      • Honey bee best management practice
      • Beekeeper advisory – mosquito insecticide control during the 2022 Japanese encephalitis outbreak
    • Nursery & garden
      • Nursery & garden pests
      • Nursery & garden product management
      • Nursery & garden best management practice
    • Onions
      • Onion pest threats
      • Onion pest eradication or control examples
    • Plantation forestry
      • Forestry biosecurity practices
      • Forestry pests
      • Hypothetical exotic bark beetle incursion
      • Plantation forestry quality assurance
    • Potatoes
      • Potato pest threats
      • Potato biosecurity areas
    • Sugarcane
      • Sugarcane best management practice
      • Sugarcane biosecurity essentials
      • Queensland Sugarcane Biosecurity Zones
      • Sugarcane pests and weeds
    • Vegetables
      • Vegetable pests
      • Vegetable product management
    • Viticulture
      • Phylloxera
      • Viticulture pests
      • Viticulture product management
  • Livestock
    • Alpacas
    • Beef cattle
    • Chickens
    • Dairy cattle
    • Ducks
    • Eggs
    • Feed mills
    • Goats
    • Lot feeding
    • Horses
    • New and emerging livestock industries
    • Pigs
      • Feeding your pigs
      • Controlling mosquitoes around piggeries
    • Sheep
    • Zoo animals
  • Get help
    • Animal health and biosecurity extension
      • Property biosecurity management planning
  • News
    • E-newsletter
    • Subscribe to Farm Biosecurity News
  • Stories
  • Videos

Ferals & weeds

Print this page
  • Home
  • Essentials
  • Ferals & weeds

Farm Biosecurity essentials: feral animals and weeds

Feral animals and weeds can both pose a health risk to livestock and damage crops. Ensure you monitor and manage these widespread risks to your business. Feral animals pose a risk to your property through direct impact on livestock and production and by carrying disease onto and around your property. To protect the health of your livestock, crops and plantations it is important to minimise the risks associated with feral animals.


Wild and feral animal access

Wild and feral animals can mix with your livestock and cause disease; they can also destroy large areas of cropping land if left unchecked. Vermin can contaminate feed and water causing disease.

  • Develop a wild and feral animal control program.
  • Protect feed and water sources.
  • Regularly check and mend broken fences.
  • Ensure farm buildings are in good repair.
  • Dispose of any carcases properly and promptly.
  • Work with neighbours and other producers in your local area to implement a coordinated approach to feral
    animal control.
  • Keep records as part of your control program.
  • Check out the National Wild Dog Action Plan
Feral pig

Weeds

Weed species are significant biosecurity problems in their own right, as well as being alternative hosts of some agricultural and horticultural pests. They can also make livestock sick. To reduce the risks:

  • know what weeds are common to your property and region, as this will mean you know if something different is present
  • establish a weed management plan for your property, which includes plans for eradicating, containing or managing weeds currently on your property, as well as stopping the introduction of new species (this will reduce the chances of pests and diseases establishing in the weed population and then moving into crops)
  • report anything unusual immediately
  • request a declaration or equivalent from your supplier which declares their products are weed free (for plants) or a Commodity Vendor Declaration (animal feed) when buying anything that has the potential to be contaminated with weed seeds.

The earlier a suspect weed is detected and reported the higher the chance of eradication or implementation of effective control measures, and the lower the long-term damage to the individual producer and the industry. It is to your benefit to report a weed detection as early as possible.

For information regarding your state or territory’s list of declared weeds please see the below links:

State or territory

  • Queensland
  • New South Wales
  • NSW WeedWise
  • Northern Territory
  • Victoria
  • Tasmania
  • South Australia weed species
  • Western Australia

National

  • Australian Weeds Committee (Weeds Australia)
  • Weeds of National Significance

Volunteer plants

Volunteer or unmanaged plants can harbour pests or diseases between seasons. These residual pests or diseases then have the potential to cause early re-infection of the following year’s crop.

Ensure crop destruction and follow-up controls remove all volunteers in paddocks. Where necessary, control volunteers external to the paddock (eg roadways, head ditches, etc).


Property and land destruction

Property and land destruction through fire, flood, storms etc, can lead to habitat changes, which often provide an opportunity for pests and weeds to become established, and for feral animals to enter. To ensure this does not become an issue, regularly inspect your property for the presence of diseases, pests, weeds and ferals, particularly any areas that have been recently landscaped (eg new roads or dams) or affected by land destruction (e.g. fences).

Read the latest information on
African swine fever

Subscribe to our newsletter

Farm Biosecurity News

Use our profiler to make your

Biosecurity Toolkit

Latest News
  • 28 April 2022

    National Plant Biosecurity Strategy released
  • 28 April 2022

    Monitoring for mango shoot looper
  • 27 April 2022

    Fast Focus: Lumpy Skin Disease
  • 27 April 2022

    Controlling mosquito populations for you and your piggery
  • 30 March 2022

    How to report pests and diseases as a grower
Useful Links
  • drumMUSTER
  • Glovebox Guide for Managing Foxes
  • PestSmart Toolkits
  • PestSmart YouTube channel
  • Weeds Australia
  • Weeds Australia (Australian Weeds Committee)
  • Weed identification videos (Biosecurity Queensland)
  • Weed out the seeds video (Biosecurity Queensland)
  • Preventing weed spread (Qld DAF)

Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline
1800 675 888

Exotic Plant Pest Hotline
1800 084 881

The FarmBiosecurity app

  • Contact us
  • Copyright
  • Privacy & Disclaimer
  • Sitemap
  • Website by Morph Digital