During the summer months when cattle are out grazing on pastures, the work of building and repairing fence, as well as rounding up escaped cattle, is a common chore for most ranchers. But changes in fence technology may offer ranchers a labor-saving option for keeping cattle where they need to be
Virtual electric fencing is a technology that has been available for several years, but ranchers are often hesitant to use the technology, as it is assumed there will be negative impacts to weight gain and breeding rates. Virtual fence is comprised of a collar that cattle wear, much like an electric collar for dogs, which delivers an electric shock when the cattle attempt to move beyond a set virtual boundary.
However, a recent study by Canadian researchers showed that virtual electric fence for cattle did not create issues with weight gain or breeding, with the data affirming little to no impacts.
“We had a conception rate of 92 percent for the 49 heifers in this study and we didn’t lose a single collar even though the pasture was made up of wooded areas,” said Alexandra Harland, a graduate student at the University of Alberta who conducted the study.
Harland’s study monitored 49 heifers and two bulls over an eight-week grazing rotation. The cattle were given an 11-day training period with the electric fence before being turned out.
Harland said the pasture boundaries created through an app on her cell phone allowed her to break up a large pasture into smaller units. The boundaries were transmitted to the collars via satellite. When the cattle got close to the boundary the collars emitted an audio warning before delivering an electric shock.
“The shock is one fifth or one sixth the power of a regular electric fence,” she said.
Harland used the virtual fence not only to cross fence the pasture for more intense grazing, but also to herd the cattle.
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“I wasn’t even in the pasture when I used the app to herd the cattle remotely,” she said. “It took an hour or two of marching the virtual pasture fence behind them to move them into the pasture where I wanted them to be.”
Over the eight weeks, Harlan said the cattle were where they were supposed to be “99 percent of the time.”
“We only had one or two escaped heifers that would turn around 15 minutes to an hour later without any intervention to bring them back in,” she said. “We did have one massive escape when there was a severe thunderstorm and the cattle all ran to the other side of the pasture to get cover under some trees. There was no damage to the collars or cows.”
The collars have a “breakaway” function in case the collars get caught on an object. An animal that escapes the virtual boundary is given three shocks and then the collar stops, registering the animal as “escaped.”
“It does not keep shocking the cattle,” she noted.
Harland also kept track of how often the animals received a shock or a warning during the eight-week study.
“We found that the number of shocks declined, but the number of audio warnings went up,” she said. “The shock percentage went down from 33 percent most of the time to only 2 percent,” she said.
Based on her study, the applications for a virtual fence are numerous, but they don’t eliminate the need for fencing altogether.
“The advantages of virtual fence are that they reduce the labor and cost of maintaining permanent or temporary offenses and help with the inconsistency of ‘keeping eyes on cattle’ since each member of the board is monitored,” she said. “But a physical perimeter fence is still necessary so that if something goes wrong, there’s a line of last defense between the herd and the public road or a neighbor’s cattle.”
