Virtual fencing advances: Developing new grazing programs

EFFINGHAM, Ill. — Virtual fencing systems remove the boundaries of where cattle, sheep and goat producers have the opportunity to graze their animals.

“I encourage the dreamers when it comes to this technology,” said Kaitlyn Dozler, virtual fence program manager at the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri.

“The opportunities are endless and I like to talk about thinking outside of the square,” she said during a presentation at the Heart of America Grazing Conference hosted by the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition, the Illinois Forage and Grassland Council, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service and University of Illinois Extension.

Dozler has been working with virtual fence technology for about four years.

“The university received a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to introduce virtual fencing to Missouri producers,” the program manager said.

“I have five private producers across the state that we have given 50 virtual fence collars to, from four companies — Nofence, Halter, eShepherd and Monil,” she said. “They are using the collars like they purchased them and I get weekly updates on what has gone really well and what has not worked.”

The systems use GPS coordinates to establish the virtual fence boundaries. Producers can use their phone, tablet or laptop to draw the virtual fence and then the GPS coordinates are uploaded onto the collar.

The collar recognizes the GPS coordinates as the animal moves throughout a field. When the animal starts to approach the virtual fence boundary, it will be met with a high-pitched sound that gets higher and faster.

“If the animal turns to go away, the sound will get quieter and slow down,” Dozler said.

“If the cow walks through the audio cue, she will be met with an electrical pulse,” she said. “It will hit the animal up to three times, turn off and the owner will get a notification on his phone that the cow has exited the virtual fence boundary.”

The virtual fence acts as a one-way gate so animals can enter back into the virtual fence without any repercussions.

“Nine times out of 10, due to herd dynamics, the cow will walk herself back in,” Dozler said. “And she won’t even know she is going through it.”

Once the cow is back in the virtual fence area, the collar will reactivate and turn on.

“If the cow tries to leave again, she will be met with that sound and shock,” Dozler said.

Training is a key component of utilizing a virtual fence system.

“It is based on associative learning,” Dozler said. “The animals need to learn to associate the sounds and shock cues with the boundary.”

On average, the program manager said, the training takes five to seven days.

“But I have seen cows learn it as fast as a couple of hours,” she said. “And I’ve seen livestock that really struggle with the system and eventually they are pulled out of the herd because they cannot figure out what the stimulus are trying to tell them.”

For training, Dozler advises choosing a pasture with a strong physical permanent fence and on day one overlay the virtual fence on the physical fence.

“When the livestock interacts with the physical fence, they hear the sound, get the shock and start to associate those two in their brain,” she said.

On day two, one side of the virtual fence is moved in, to make the paddock area smaller. Each day, the producer moves the virtual fence line in, to make the paddock smaller and smaller until day seven of the training.

“With a lot of the apps, you can click on the collars and it will tell you the number of sounds and the number of shocks the animal had that day,” Dozler said. “So, you can have a pretty clear idea of which animals in your herd have picked it up the fastest.”

There are different types of virtual fencing systems, including some that are cellular based.

“These collars use the same cellular network that your phone uses to send a text or make calls,” Dozler said.

“As long as you are in cellular service and collars are in cellular service, you will be able to manage those cows whether you are sitting on a beach in Hawaii or you are sitting here at this meeting today,” she said. “You are able to see the animals and change the fences.”

Base stations act as a relay point to pass information back and forth between the collars and the app.

“Vence relies on base stations and depending on your topography, you could potentially need four or five base stations to cover your ranch,” Dozler said.

“Halter is currently the only company that the collars communicate directly to satellites,” she said. “You can be somewhere without a cell tower around, and as long as the collar can see directly to a satellite, you will be able to use it, so this is an exciting advancement to the technology and the University of Missouri will be getting a couple of them.”

Producers have the ability to create different shapes of pastures for grazing their animals with a virtual fence.

“I have seen producers make an alleyway down a country road to move their cows from one pasture to another,” Dozler said.

“One of the cool features of the virtual fence technology is you can schedule the moves,” she said. “A lot of my producers used it last year during harvest and planned the moves for the next one to two days, then they did not have to think about it for a couple of days.”

With the real-time livestock tracking, producers can get an updated GPS location of an animal about every 10 to 20 minutes.

“I had a producer during harvest that had about three cows left to calve, and when he saw one of the cows off by herself, he knew she was probably getting ready to calve,” Dozler said. “He had his dad check and there was a new calf on the ground and he never stopped the combine.”

Another feature is cattle behavior alerts that indicate the neckband has either dropped off or the animal is no longer moving.

“There was a situation in Montana where a cow got stuck in a pasture pond and the producer is pretty confident that cow would have probably died if it was not for the alert,” Dozler said.

Virtual fencing technology is continuously updating and improving.

“The animal health components such as calving detection and heat detection are coming within the next year,” Dozler said.