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The Grazing Grass Podcast features insights and stories of regenerative farming, specifically emphasizing grass-based livestock management. Our mission is to foster a community where grass farmers can share knowledge and experiences with one another. We delve into their transition to these practices, explore the ins and outs of their operations, and then move into the "Over Grazing" segment, which addresses specific challenges and learning opportunities. The episode rounds off with the "Famous Four" questions, designed to extract valuable wisdom and advice. Join us to gain practical tips and inspiration from the pioneers of regenerative grass farming.
This is the podcast for you if you are trying to answer: What are regenerative farm practices? How to be grassfed? How do I graze other species of livestock? What's are ways to improve pasture and lower costs? What to sell direct to the consumer?
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NOTE: There were 2 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.
0:00:00 - Cal
On today's episode we have Theo Beaumont from Halter. Halter does virtual fence and if you're interested in that, this is the episode for you. We will get started with the Fast Five. What's your name? My name's Theo Beaumont and Theo. Who do you work for?
0:00:19 - Theo
I work for a company called Halter. We're a virtual fencing company based out of New Zealand.
0:00:24 - Cal
And you got our next question where are you located? You're based out of New, Zealand. Do you live in New Zealand?
0:00:30 - Theo
Technically, yes, although I've spent most of the last 12 months in the US, covering quite a few different states in the west, and I'll be moving over here full time from February, so excited to be over here full time.
0:00:41 - Cal
Have you already figured out where you're going to live?
0:00:44 - Theo
I am going to be. I'm going to be just outside of Denver in Colorado. We're putting our mind at secure for the US over here, but yeah, we're excited to be here, so thanks in advance for having me.
0:00:53 - Cal
Oh, very good. And where do you all provide coverage for your?
0:00:57 - Theo
product. So Holter was founded in New Zealand originally about eight years ago. So we got coming up over 250,000 cattle using the system now in New Zealand, australia, now the US. We're live in six different states in the US as of today and we'll be available for the majority of states in the West for very early next year.
0:01:19 - Cal
So when you talk about six states right now, you're working to get more of the states, mainly in the West.
0:01:26 - Theo
Yes, yeah, absolutely. That's the primary focus for us at this stage. Yeah.
0:01:30 - Cal
And what countries are you available for outside of Australia, new Zealand and the US? Just those three We've kept it Just those three.
0:01:38 - Theo
That's our top three.
0:01:40 - Cal
Yeah, do you have any plans to move into some other countries?
0:01:44 - Theo
I think eventually, of course, we'll be looking at Europe, south America, canada, but at the moment we just want to keep really focused on the US. Make sure we set things up really effectively over here and then we can move to other countries when we need to.
0:01:57 - Cal
Oh, very good. Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, the podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers and exploring regenerative practices that improve the land, animals and our lives. I'm your host, gal Hartage, and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences and inspiring each other to grow and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazer or just getting started, this is the place for you. Attention ranchers, are you ready to boost your ranch's profitability in 2025? Join Noble Research Institute for Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, texas, this January 28th-29th.
This transformative two-day course will help you unlock the full potential of your land and livestock. Noble's experienced advisors, with over 200 years of combined experience, will guide you through proven strategies to enhance your bottom line. You'll learn how to improve soil health, maximize forage quality, reduce costly inputs and optimize stocking rates. This course is designed to address your unique challenges and build lasting solutions for your ranching operation. Through hands-on activities and interactive conversations, you'll gain valuable skills to create a more resilient, productive and profitable ranch that will thrive for generations. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the best and secure your ranching legacy. Space is limited, so visit nobleorg today to enroll in Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, texas, January 28th 29th Invest in your land, livestock and livelihood this January. So we talked a little bit about where it's coverage, but we really haven't even talked about what the product is. I really want to cover that a little bit later because I really want to find out your path to Halter.
0:04:04 - Theo
So I guess, yeah, my journey into halter was a bit of a whirlwind. I was actually born on a farm originally. I started working on a sheep and beef station not far from my home when I was about 13. Fell in love with the industry Was really fortunate.
0:04:16 - Cal
Oh yes.
0:04:17 - Theo
A bunch of producers kind of took me under their wing, did that the whole way through. High school I studied agricultural science at Lincoln University, which is our main ag union. I was looking at the banking route, decided that wasn't quite for me and I stumbled across Holzer back in its very early days just when we had a couple of hundred collars on cows very early stage startup. And that was about four and a half years ago. So it's been a whirlwind since then.
0:04:43 - Cal
Very good. Do you see yourself at some point running your own animals?
0:04:47 - Theo
For sure I think it's. It's a massive goal of mine. You know, eventually, you know I'm not sure what direction life is going to take me and withhold it, but I'd love to get to a point where I could run, run and raise a bunch of my own cattle in New Zealand. I think that's just a really, really cool goal to have, particularly given you know whereabouts in New Zealand I'm usually based.
0:05:04 - Cal
Where you live in New Zealand is there a lot of farms in that area.
0:05:08 - Theo
Yeah, there's an expression in New Zealand that everybody has an uncle on a farm and it's generally true and for our US listeners you'll have to forgive the lingo swap everybody in New Zealand's a farmer, no matter if you have crops or cattle or sheep. So bear with me there, but New Zealand's got maybe 40 million sheep, 10 million cattle and only about 5 million people. So if you love livestock, and farming New Zealand's your place.
0:05:33 - Cal
I have to say New Zealand's on the list of places I want to visit. I've not made it there yet, but the dairy industry over there has fascinated me for decades.
0:05:44 - Theo
Well, we certainly love visitors. We've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of our US producers visit us over in New Zealand. Dairy industry over there has fascinated me for decades. Well, we certainly love visitors. We've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of our US producers visit us over in New Zealand. And, yeah, we love visitors.
0:05:54 - Cal
Our farmers love having people to visit their systems have a cup of tea and show them around and they can see what we're doing Now. We're going to talk a little bit more about halter later, but halter gives us some advantages, especially when we think about regenerative practices and moving your cattle were the stations you got to explore, as while you were in school, were they rotating cows and using some regenerative?
0:06:18 - Theo
practices. Absolutely, it's a really interesting kind of discussion, this one, new zealand, just because of the way our systems work, the quantity of grass we've, we have, we we've always rotationally grazed. You'd struggle to find the producer in the country that doesn't rotationally graze. Oh, interesting it usually comes into how much rotating are they doing? Are they shifting daily or weekly? Set stocking aside from at particular points of the year doesn't really happen anymore back in New Zealand.
0:06:44 - Cal
Oh, that's very interesting. I've got a couple of New Zealand YouTube channels I watch and I know they rotate, but I didn't know how widespread that was. Now, one thing with that, theo. I see the channels I follow. They're big into. I don't know about big, but they're using fertilizer and some chemicals to get the forage they want. Are you seeing any kind of shift with chemical usage on that land over there?
0:07:12 - Theo
That's a good question. I think a lot of it depends on where in the bats in the country are what type of system you're running. Soil testing is just sort of common bread and butter tool across all systems in New Zealand.
So we're monitoring what's in our soil, what we're inputting and what we're taking out of the soil. We've definitely seen the amount of nitrogen reduce heavily in the last sort of five to eight years and we're seeing some really good benefits of that without too much sort of sacrifice from a productivity point of view. Certainly from a fertilizer point of view, we use it pretty commonly to make sure we're not depleting our soils any more than they need to. Oh yeah, From a chemical point of view that use is absolutely trying to decrease as costs have gone up. You know we try to be really smarter on where we're using chemicals and a lot of that's cost driven. But also there's just a really big drive from, like a soil health standpoint. Soil health, um, pasture quality, bit of livestock.
0:08:06 - Cal
so there's a strong sort of flow on appreciation there I, I know on the channels I watch seeing them they're very deliberate and very calculated. With fertilizer they apply and, like you said, they're getting soil tests. They know exactly what they have and what they need to apply test. They know exactly what they have and what they need to apply. It's very interesting on that, that fact, because maybe this is just us when we used to do it, we just kind of shot in the dark, you know, said well, it should help yeah, I think we've been.
0:08:36 - Theo
We've been fortunate just to you have the, the tools and the companies available to do that soil testing all the time, um, and a really cost-effective fashion as well oh yeah, yeah, with halter starting over there.
0:08:52 - Cal
What was the the goal in starting? Let's? Let's see how I want to word that, theo, I think it's. It's interesting coming from new zealand, you're working with a smaller country when you're rotating cows. It doesn't seem to me it would be large acreage of land they're rotating cows on now. Granted, I'm grazing smaller acreage and I would love to have some virtual fencing because I think there's a lot of benefit. But I'm a little surprised halter got started there, as opposed to like in the Australian outback or western US, where you've got these vast ranges of land.
0:09:33 - Theo
Yeah, I think it's a fair question and I think if you look at the product you can really tell that we've been designed and built in New Zealand originally. Like I said, new Zealand's got a lot of cattle. There's no shortage of them. Where we started was actually in the dairy space.
What kind of defines New Zealand's dairy systems is that our cows live on grass their whole lives. We might put them on strip grazing cover crop for a little bit through winter, but in general grass makes up the vast proportion of their diet. A lot of that ground is irrigated so we're able to actually stock really heavily on quite small tracts of land. So, for example, 100 hectare property could be running through 350 head on it. So I think what that usually comes with is a lot of time spent walking behind cows, putting up hot wires, very heavy labor investment, and that was probably one of the initial drivers for Halter and what that kind of morphed into which is our wider company mission, which is how do we make pasture-based systems more profitable but also more sustainable, and grass really is our biggest lever for both of those.
0:10:37 - Cal
Oh yeah, when I think about that. I grew up on a dairy and I talked just recently. We had Ted Miller on episode 190. He was on the podcast and I believe he's using Alter and he was saying there were some really nice benefits to moving cows and it sounded like I think he was the one telling me. You know, we always went. One of us had to go get cows and bring them to the barn for each milking, while the other one got the milk barn ready, and he was able to do that through the virtual fencing component, which I thought was really neat.
0:11:14 - Theo
Yeah, I think that's probably. You know, when people look at us as a product, that's probably the bit that usually amazes them most. If you're a dairy farmer in New Zealand, aussie or the US, like at Ted's place right now in Louisiana, if you wanted to bring your cows in for tomorrow morning's milking and you could just pre-set that up on your phone and then let's say, you want the cows at the shed at 5 o'clock in the morning, well, you arrive at the shed and the cows are going to be waiting there for you. The collars will have guided them out of their pasture all the way down the laneway to to the milking parlor or milking shed.
0:11:48 - Cal
Which I think's amazing. I think pulling in at the barn at four in the morning and the cows be there when you're arriving would be really nice.
0:11:54 - Theo
And I'll tell you what I've seen a lot of times now. That never gets old If it's a little bit of excitement every time. So it's. It's very special to see and, yeah, just what what. What that has done for like the general day-to-day lives of our producers has been pretty powerful.
0:12:09 - Cal
Oh yeah, Because so when we dairy, if one of us was doing the milking, no one else was available, they had to come down 30 minutes, 45 minutes ahead of time to get cows to the barn, then get in the barn, get everything set up. So I think you said earlier you all started with dairy industry kind of in mind.
0:12:29 - Theo
Yeah, so dairy is where we started Our CEO and founder, craig Piggott. He grew up on a on a small, you know, pasture-based dairy system in New Zealand and actually the classic sort of size and scale for for where he grew up in. So I think that naturally was a really good starting point, uh, for us. Yet the first sort of six and a half years of holter's life was purely focused on the dairy side of things, because it's such a big part of new zealand's you know agricultural industry and our entire economy so after those initial years, did you all what was the plan with the focus?
0:13:04 - Cal
did you all go ahead and move into australia? Was that a really quick move? Or do you focus on going to beef cattle in new zealand?
0:13:12 - Theo
but both so we're fortunate as a company that we have such a big market in new zealand. There wasn't this huge rush to get offshore. Oh yeah, I think that was really beneficial for keeping us really focused on building the product as best we could. You know, working through some of those early challenges that any new company faces right and really honing in on you know how we get the most value for our farms. So initially we did a dairy expansion over to tasmania and that was more yeah two and a half years ago.
Tasmania is quite a similar environment to new zealand oh yes, and also a lot of dairy cows. So we launched over there. That was fantastic for us and then about 12 to 15 months ago we built and launched our beef product in New Zealand. New Zealand obviously has a big beef industry across breeding cows, but also finishing beef as well. But really the big and high level goal for our beef product was the US market, the wider Australian market. There's a lot of motivation to be over here in that space and I think as a company we were always really excited about when we could do beef. We just wanted to make sure we're doing it at the right time when we could do the job properly. We had a really good product and a really good team on the ground to make sure if we're going to do the job, we're going to do it really well.
0:14:26 - Cal
Oh yes, yeah, and as to do the job, we were going to do it really well. Oh yes, yeah, as we talk about those large ruminants, when did you?
0:14:31 - Theo
all dive into any small ruminants. We get this question a lot, being kiwis, you know. With 40 million sheep ticking around our hills, everyone asks are we going to do a call of a sheep? The answer is, at least for the foreseeable future, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah, you know, we're purely focused on cows. There's a lot of cows out there, so I think that's more than enough to keep us busy for the next real while.
0:14:51 - Cal
You know and I think there's a lot to be said about maintaining your focus in the correct way without, you know, getting too many irons in the fire my wife likes to tell me every time I have a new idea you have enough going on right now. So yeah, focus in on your product and once that's all going better, you can look at other things. But right now, work, work on the path you have ahead of you.
0:15:16 - Theo
I think you know we don't have any other products. Virtual fencing is everything we have. So everybody at Holter is focused on nothing but that and I think you, we look forwards. You know our company mission is pretty lofty and you know that's really to drive super meaningful change for the future of, you know, pasture-based ag systems globally. You know that's not a quick process, so for us, right, we'll see virtual fencing as a tool to get us there. So let's stay really focused on that virtual fencing piece in cattle and then that's going to be the best, best way for us to achieve that goal yeah, you've been available in new zealand for the longest time, obviously.
0:15:54 - Cal
How has the reception been there and how has the rollout gone?
0:16:01 - Theo
look, it hasn't been without challenges. You know you're you're a growing company, you're a startup. You know you get challenges every single day. I think when the concept for Holder was first put across, there was a lot of skepticism, as you can imagine, but there was also a lot of excitement. There's a lot of challenges in New Zealand's ag space labor costs and there's a heap of challenges there.
I think everyone saw Holdter as a way that it could really change the game. However, you know, being really early, you you get your initial skip tips and that's okay. So I think for us it was around. You know, get enough feed on the ground initially and then and you start to build out that trust in the market. So there has been challenges.
The dairy industry in new zealand has gone through some really big issues and challenges with prices, but overall we're incredibly proud of how it's gone. We've got over 200,000 dairy cows in New Zealand using the system and all of those have really come in the last three and a half years. So, while I wouldn't say we're perfect, we still have things we can learn and do better and we can continue to build more trust in the the market. We're really proud of what we've done, and I'm just so lucky to have been able to work with such good producers, uh, from day one oh yes, another question on your new zealand market before we really dive more into closer to me with your, your rollout there and getting started.
0:17:22 - Cal
There's going to be hurdles. We all know that. What is a a stumbling block that you all overcame, that you you look back and say that was that really helped us?
0:17:34 - Theo
where do we want to start?
0:17:35 - Cal
I know how long we're here there's um, there's recording is going, so just take off there's out.
0:17:41 - Theo
There's plenty on there. To be honest, the biggest one that actually comes to mind and there's there's heaps I could from, but I'm going to pick this one was really getting targeted on what the value proposition was. And then, as a company, what do we need to most focus on? So often when people first hear about Holter, they immediately jump to labor. They're like fantastic, no one has to walk house to the shed, no one has to go cut up fences, save all this time and labor. I've got a heap of pain, you know, and that part of my business is expensive. It's hard to retain labor. So then for a while, you know, as a company, we really focused on that and we sort of got caught up in this talking about labor. A lot of the focus was on labor.
But then when we actually had a bit of a realization that you know, at its, at its core principles and that's first principles halter is just a tool to change your grazing management. Well, in new zealand, you know, 80 of your profitability give or take is usually dictated by your grazing management. So we had a real, real big, like epiphany almost, as a company, and realized we really need to double down on pasture. What the value of pasture was, and it wasn't so much around. How are you grazing currently with polywire or hot wire? It was around. If you had unlimited fences, what would you do? That was the biggest sort of you know? Breakthrough moment for us is really doubling down on pasture, what that meant, and then consequently really handling the product to focus so heavily on that pasture side of things. So it was a really interesting stumbling block to come across. You know we didn't figure it out overnight, but I'm really stoked that we did it and it's been a big game changer for us.
0:19:16 - Cal
Yeah, because it gives you the ability to manage your grass much more intensively without the additional labor. Labor comes into it, but, yeah, you're managing your grass even better.
0:19:28 - Theo
And what I really like about that is you know, pasture management isn't just unique to dairy, it's across beef systems as well. So I think, as we start to look offshore and particularly at the span of the beef market, that focus on grazing management is going to serve us really well.
0:19:43 - Cal
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0:20:54 - Theo
Yeah, absolutely so. Halter, as I mentioned, a New Zealand company originally. We've always been really excited about the US market. Quite a lot of our investment as a company has come out of the US, so there was always a really strong alignment to get on the ground over here.
First, though, we had to come and learn about your systems, so that's what I've been doing for sort of the last 12 months. I've been fortunate enough to visit a heap of ranches right across the West. Everyone's made me feel very welcome, just trying to learn as much as we can about your systems how to vary between states, how it varies from New Zealand to make sure, for a product side of things, we're giving you a tool that's going to be really impactful. So that was step one. Step two was actually getting some ranches live. So we launched our first ranch about six months ago. Our first one was up in Oregon, and since then we've got ranches live across Oregon, california, montana, colorado, kansas, texas, louisiana, and there'll be a heap more states to come sort of in January and February next year.
0:21:49 - Cal
Oh yes, and you mentioned this a little bit earlier You've got those states. The other states are coming pretty quickly. How are you identifying what states you want to add and what's that process to get a new state online?
0:22:05 - Theo
yeah, there's. There's a few moving parts to that, I think. You know, usually we really like to try to spend some time in that state to learn about the systems and figure out, hey, is this a good fit? Oh yeah, you know, commercially there's easing levers.
You can look at cattle numbers in certain states. You can probably tell, looking at those states I listed off, they're all big cattle states and rightly so. We have to think really efficiently as a business. When we do go into a new state. We really like to have someone from Holter Live on the ground in that state. We're big leaders in coming up the driveway. So hiring a team in all those states is really important and something we take really seriously so that we can provide really good customer service to our ranchers once they've got Halter. There's always a few little logistical things to figure out with shipping and new states and various laws and bits and pieces, but we've got that pretty dialed in now. So I'd say if we decided tomorrow that we wanted to get a ranch live in Nevada, we could make that happen pretty quickly.
0:23:08 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah Is the. Are you all available completely across Australia, or are you in certain?
0:23:10 - Theo
territories there. So Australia, at the moment we're just available in Tasmania and Queensland. We will spread out across other parts of Australia in due course but again, just keeping focused at the moment, not trying to run before we can walk over there and it's a big old bit of ground.
0:23:25 - Cal
It is. I think there's a lot more hurdles in some of those vast areas there than what you would find out in Western US. So I can see why, or the I can see your path there and why you're going there. Let's let's talk actually about the product and what it looks like for a farmer who or rancher that's going to do this. You've got a collar on a cow and it's got GPS and solar. Do they have anything else they have to put in place? Does it have a base unit, a tower?
0:24:00 - Theo
Yes, yeah there's a few. There's a few bits there. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Every car gets a collar it's very own collar that's solar powered, which is great. There's no batteries to change. Once they go on, they stay on. So that's really important. And we put up base stations around a ranch or a property as well that uses a that puts its own network out over a property that pulls all the data up off the comms the whole time. So why that's been really valuable for us in in more rural parts of the world is that we don't need any cell service um to operate, and so if you're on a ranch and you've got no or very limited cell service, it's not going to be a restriction for you coming on board so if that's using like wi-fi technology so you can connect back to the base, are you working with some line of sight there?
0:24:48 - Cal
or how many stations or towers do you have to have to cover an area it?
0:24:53 - Theo
really depends on the area. The towers just have to go to make a big difference. Yeah, you got it. So the tower just needs to be able to see another tower. It's like forms a seamless sort of mesh network across a property.
0:25:04 - Cal
Oh yeah.
0:25:05 - Theo
And we typically we don't leave dead spots. We're shooting for 100% coverage at all times and, yeah, the terrain is really the biggest thing that influences that coverage. So if you're a dead flat ranch with no trees, well you know, you might get five, 7,000 acres off one tower alone. If you go out with Rockies or the forest servers Bealeen ground, for example, heap of trees, that's not going to be as high. So we basically have to just customize it to every single ranch and we've got a pretty efficient process to to work that through.
0:25:36 - Cal
We just need to look at some maps and and we can figure out quickly, yeah, so based upon that, a tower is going to cover a few miles of terrain. Depending on the terrain, if you've got nice flat land, it makes a big difference. Yeah, now you mentioned you're shooting for 100% coverage. You get out west, you got some deep gullies I don't even know what they're called in the west. Gullies is what I'd call them here. And draws, how, how's coverage on those type areas, or have you all experienced too much of that?
0:26:10 - Theo
unfortunately for us, new zealand's got a big line of mountings running right down the middle of the middle of the south island, which is where I live, so a lot of our sheep and beef systems run and very steep, difficult terrain, oh yes. So I'm very glad that we have experienced a bunch of that before we came over to the US. So no, that sort of big mountainous terrain, while it's not as easy as flat ground, it doesn't scare us and it's absolutely workable. Just needs a bit of thought behind it.
0:26:37 - Cal
Oh yeah. Yeah, you mentioned a tower base, base station. Are those one part that's together, or are we talking a tower out somewhere in a base station, in a barn or same?
0:26:50 - Theo
same same word, same same. Oh, okay, okay, it's a singular tower that's solar powered as well. So you just, oh, it's solar powered, that's it. So it just goes anywhere that we need to put it and however many you need around your property.
0:27:04 - Cal
Oh, okay. And you said the collars are solar powered so you don't have to worry about replacing batteries. So that's going to extend the life of those, I would assume. But what's the lifetime of those collars?
0:27:18 - Theo
Yeah, so we designed the collars to last about five years. Oh okay, but because we pair it with a subscription model, the warranty is always on halter. So if anything ever did go wrong with those collars, that's on halter.
0:27:30 - Cal
Oh, okay, so is it a lease on the collars and if there's any problem, you all take care of the problem?
0:27:36 - Theo
It's similar but it's actually a subscription, so we give the collars. It's theirs. But yeah, if anything does go wrong with the collars, if one breaks or there's a problem with one not that it's particularly common yeah, that's Holder's problem and we sort that.
0:27:52 - Cal
Oh, yes. And then the ranch is also purchasing the base station tower. Essentially, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And is there a lifetime on that? Or is that good for foreseeable future?
0:28:05 - Theo
Foreseeable future. And again, the warranties on a halter. Obviously, if you drive into it and snap it in half, that's on the rancher, but anything internal, that's halter's problem.
0:28:16 - Cal
So a ranch reaches out to you and they're in one of those states that you guys are already in. How long is the process till they can have it going on their ranch?
0:28:27 - Theo
Good question. In New Zealand we only need about four weeks notice. In the US, because it's a bit newer, it's a bit further away, we really need about eight weeks notice.
As you can imagine there's busier times of year. April May are going to be super busy for us when everyone's bringing their cows in anyway, oh yeah. So I think, yeah, minimum eight weeks. But you know, the more notice we can get, the better. You know, always we're taking a lot of pride in. If a producer really wants Holter and they need it by a particular time frame, we will move heaven and earth to try and make that happen for them.
0:28:54 - Cal
Oh yeah, and as you're expanding into those states, are you focused just on cattle, or is it beef more or dairy more or just cattle?
0:29:05 - Theo
equally Good question. I'd say that, just given the market size, 97% of the focus will be on beef cow-calf operations. Unfortunately, there just isn't a huge amount of grazing dairies in the US. We're fortunate enough to have Ted down in Louisiana, which is great. We're in chats with a bunch more grazing dairies, but I'm going to say that the primary focus is on beef. But obviously if there are pasture-based grazing dairies where the product is going to be really valuable, we won't just ignore them.
0:29:34 - Cal
Right, because we've got so many confined dairies and that confinement, they've got all kinds of other worries to worry about.
0:29:41 - Theo
Yeah, and I don't think the solar is probably not going to go very well in a confinement dairy site.
0:29:45 - Cal
Yeah, right, yeah, so you get the collars in. Is that something that a rancher has someone from Holter coming out and putting them on? Is that on the rancher to put them on? How's that?
0:30:02 - Theo
process to initially get started. Yep, I can. I can outline that so I guess you know, after you've met with one of our team and you've decided, yep, we're going to go here with halter, we're aiming for a particular month, we'll have taken all your ranch maps, we'll have mapped them all, we'll have got it set up in an app inside the halter app and we'll have drawn in all your features or your fence lines, watering points, et cetera. The producers are gonna get access to that app and then they're gonna go through an onboarding process and that's typically like two weeks before collars turn up. So that's us training them and their staff how to use the app, how it works as a tool, and really making sure when they do collar they've got a really good understanding of what they're doing. Collars and towers arrive on the ranch. Ranchers go and self-install towers First. One usually takes about an hour, after that they take about 12 minutes.
They're just designed for one person to be able to put up and down.
On part of it. We'll be able to see remotely that the whole network is live and we're good to go For collaring. You know that's the most exciting day. That's Christmas mormon. Typically this is just driven by the ranchers and producers. There are occasions where we'll have people on the ground, which can be great for our landings. But what we've found is ranchers know their cattle best and tend to spook in the least if it's just them dealing with them. So collars will arrive. Let's say you're collaring a 300 head, you'll have them in the corrals. Collars will arrive. Let's say you're collaring a 300 head, you'll have them under the corrals. You collar them in a chute, typically with backing bars. You put a collar on a cow. You'll beep it with the app on your phone. Then you'll type in the year tag number on your phone and that assigns that collar to that cow.
0:31:34 - Cal
Off she goes, oh, okay.
0:31:35 - Theo
And then, prior to collaring the ranch with their account manager, will have worked out a really specific individualized training program for their own system so that they can immediately go into that. You know, two week typically sort of two week training period post-collaring.
0:31:52 - Cal
Let's jump back to the training for the farmer before he gets the collars. Is that going to be an in-person training? Is that a Zoom training, or is that recorded videos for that producer?
0:32:04 - Theo
Combination and sometimes we have to tailor it for the specific ranch. But the majority is Zoom session online. It's not quite face-to-face but it's about as good as face-to-face as we can make it. So we've got a specialized team whose entire job is onboarding our producers and at some we take really seriously. We always joke that sometimes training the producers can be harder than training the cows. We want to invest a lot of time and effort into that to make sure people feel really comfortable.
0:32:32 - Cal
Oh yeah, I would suspect that's the case. Now, on training the cows, you mentioned a couple weeks. So you all work with the farmer, design the original or the the two-week training period or however long it needs for those cows to get used to the system that's correct.
0:32:49 - Theo
And when I say we work with the ranch, it's because every ranch operates a little differently and you know we need to tailor that training to to match how that ranch operates. Particularly as we're going in the us, we're learning more and more about that, so there's more focus on it and it's just to make sure that training is really important. So we want to set the cows up to succeed. We want to make sure it's really easy for the rancher and well as easy as it can be, to make sure that we're getting the right outcome there. So, for example, if you always shift your cattle with horses, we're going to incorporate horses into the training, but if you only use wheelers, we're just going to use four wheelers. So this is that process of weaning the cattle off what they're used to and weaning them onto the collars.
0:33:31 - Cal
Oh, yes, let's talk just a moment how the collars work to keep the cows where they're supposed to be. Yes, when you turn them out there, I'm assuming well, assuming well in my conversations there's some feedback for the cow maybe, maybe auditory feedback. Does it also vibrate for them, or is it just auditory?
0:33:52 - Theo
no, there's three cues that we use. So we've got, oh okay, auditory cues, and then we've got, uh, a low energy, electric pulse, and then we've got vibration as well.
0:34:00 - Cal
So, all three Okay, like different An electric pulse yeah.
0:34:03 - Theo
Yeah, you got it. The primary cue is the sound and this is this is really important. So well, if I was a cow and I was walking towards the screen, and we'll pretend it's a virtual fence I'm going to be getting beeps. That increase in volume and frequency as I get closer. So I'm learning to associate that. That increase in volume means getting closer to a fence a little bit, a little bit like your car back into a brick wall. And then as you get right up to that fence and I'm talking super close I'm going to get beeps in either ear. So we beep the cows on the right ear, turn them left, left ear, turn them right. So we've got that directional guidance for each animal turn it away from the fence.
The actual virtual fence isn't a hard line, you know. Don't think of it like a polywire where they touch her and then suddenly get you know a shock off the fence With Holter. How it's actually working is the cow's allowed to step over the fence, the colo recognizes that she's out, tries to guide her back into zone again using the beeps and lift her right ear. And if she's out, tries to guide her back into zone again using the beeps and left or right here, and if she's over for too long, that's when she'll get that, that other cue, which is the pulse to say right, hurry, move back over. The really key thing for us there is that you know, you put this foreign object on a cow's neck. Suddenly she can no longer see a fence, so it's. It's up to us to make sure the cow understands exactly where that virtual fence is and it's really predictable and really consistent for her at all times.
0:35:27 - Cal
So I'm assuming the training process you're going to have either a poly wire, because the cows are broke to it, or we're working with a solid fence. That's going to just train them along that fence so when they're close to it they're getting beeped at and if they get too close then maybe they get shocked and it's eventually you're going to move the fence away and they're going to have the ability to go across that line.
Essentially, yeah, you could you could be in my job, mate well, wow boy, there's not too many jobs I can do well, so no worries, theo, I think it's interesting. One thing you said there that I didn't realize was they're getting auditory feedback on left or right side, so that they know which way to go, yes, or which way to move away from.
0:36:17 - Theo
Absolutely, and that's just about again. It's that predictability for the cow, you know. So, for example, if we were going to shift cows so let's say, let's say at 150 acre pasture for argument's sake, and you want to split it into thirds so you could rotate a bit harder and shift them once every two days, if you said right, I want them to shift out of that first part of that paddock at four o'clock this afternoon, when that timer goes off and you've just preset this on your phone, each cow gets a combination of sound to help face her head in the right direction of where she needs to go so understanding hey, this is where I need to go.
And then the collars vibrate and the vibration is the positive cue that they associate with moving forwards. They associate that with right, with fresh feed time to move. So it's the sound in each ear and the vibration working together to help persuade that cow to move into their next area and then it will close off behind them.
0:37:12 - Cal
Oh, okay, so you're getting the auditory feedback when you're trying to turn or move, yes, and then the vibration is when they're facing the right way and they just need to walk forward. You got it. Oh interesting, I didn't realize that about the vibration.
0:37:27 - Theo
I thought that might be another cue that was between the sound and the electric pulse, but it's actually a positive thing it is, and I think that's really important because you know, we all know cattle, if we try to spook them, to move them, they don't. They don't feel that happily about it. So that vibration has always been just such a like fundamental part of of the collar, and why it's able to work so well with the cows is that they trust it.
0:37:51 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah, I really like that positive aspect of it that I hadn't thought about. That. I really like on that, when you're initially getting these collars on, that's something foreign around a cow's neck and stuff. Is there anything that a person has to watch out for during that initial period?
0:38:10 - Theo
Um, I think, to make sure we're putting the collars on correctly. We want to put them on snug, but to be honest, I mean, this is a collar here. You know there's an iPhone for for comparison, they're pretty small.
Yes, super lightweight. They're really comfortable around a cow's neck and I always do find it amazing is how quickly they get used to them. But my recommendation would just be make sure you've really gone and asked the questions around what you need to do to column most successfully. Make sure you've got a few extra pairs of hands to help you. You know we're putting them on as efficiently as we can. We're not leaving them standing on concrete in the yards for any longer than necessary, and we can get them back out in the pasture and behind their first virtual fence is there any concern about if they're grazing in a wooded area and getting a limb between their collar and neck?
0:38:53 - Cal
is that, is that a real concern, or is those collars snug enough? That's not really that big a concern I think it's a bit of both.
0:39:02 - Theo
I don't think it's. It's not a huge concern from the collar side. I mean, the collar's not going to break and it's designed so that it will come off if it gets caught up on something. Oh, okay.
0:39:12 - Cal
So there's a safety release on it 100%.
0:39:15 - Theo
There's two. So first, it would tear between the holes and the buckle so that the motion and the character slip out of it. Second, the whole collar will snap. So that's just like a fundamental part of you know how the collar's been designed. I think you know. If you're looking at um super dense timber country, like forest service ground where I've been mountains yeah, that concern is probably going to be a little bit higher. But I think you know we've worked really hard to make sure we're mitigating that as best we can. Um, yeah and yeah, it's not something. We've worked really hard to make sure we're mitigating that as best we can.
0:39:45 - Cal
Yeah and yeah, it's not something we've seen an issue with so far and we've talked about putting them on cows and getting them trained to cows. Do calves have to have them? At what point does a calf need their own collar?
0:39:56 - Theo
Yeah, it's a fair question. There's two sides to this. With calves we actually don't want to collar them quite deliberately. The reason being is we want those calves to be able to creep feed ahead of mum, particularly those last three months when they start really competing with mum to feed With a virtual fence. If we can just contain mum behind but let all the calves feed ahead, we're going to really boost those weaning weights. I guess that's one kind of really large benefit of the virtual fence. In the first place, if you are doing grass, finished beef, for example, and you want to finish a bunch of those, those animals, yourself, we typically will only collar from about eight months and up. We find any game that too difficult to train, train. But eight months and up, um, it's pretty normal for us to collar, collar and train um that that age bracket of animals when we think about cows, eight months and up you're dealing with a large size range from a calf to a bull.
0:40:55 - Cal
Are you collaring bulls and do your collars work well in those different sizes?
0:41:01 - Theo
They certainly work well in all different sizes of cattle. Out there We've got a heap of different breeds and that's part and parcel. You just make the strap a bit longer, we do not collar dreading mature bulls. It's not as weird as we don't think we could hold them. It's really just physiologically necks are bigger than heads. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, it's not something that we, we, we don't call a bulls. We find the bulls over the cows.
anyway, and ideally, because we're going to be hopefully containing the cows in a smaller area the bulls are going to be able to service, service more, a lot more effectively and not lose them, particularly in, you know, more extensive timber country.
0:41:39 - Cal
Oh yes, when you're we've talked about that we're able to move them. You're able to move them from your phone, shift them to a different paddock. Is that phone app? You pull it up? Is that showing you a location of every collar, and what other information does it give you?
0:41:59 - Theo
Yes, there's a few bits to that, but yeah, I guess, first and foremost, holter will always show you the live GPS location of every single cow that has a collar on it. So I think you know. The first really cool thing about Holter is you can see your farm from anywhere. You know you could be in a different state. You could be, you know, at your kid's football game. You could pull up your phone and say, hey, my cows are where they need to be Fantastic.
There is a bunch of different information that producers can see in the app. That does vary between dairy versus beef Dairy. There's a heap of features in there that we'll probably take too long to talk about. The beef it's a little bit more stripped back, but you can see all of your historical grazing is. You can search for a cow at any point. You can see all the live locations and there's a heap. There's a heap built in there as well, which I think producers always really enjoy seeing as part of that exploratory process into what halter is and how it could work for them.
0:42:53 - Cal
Is it giving you feedback on? Well, my phone tells me how many steps I took today. Now, whether or not it's accurate is debatable, but is it giving some activity monitoring of those cows to the user on the app?
0:43:10 - Theo
so for dairy, absolutely. We're measuring all of their movement, their rumination, their live grazing and when they're resting or restless, and we use that for a lot of our features in dairy. Around the heat detection, yes, health alerts, carving alerts, alerts, there's a whole heap there. For beef no, the majority is just focused on the GPS location and movement for our own internal systems. We're not saying, hey, you know, cow 371s walked 3.74 miles today.
0:43:38 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah. So for beef cows you're not giving feedback that a cow may be in heat.
0:43:46 - Theo
No, Not at this stage for beef, and part of that just comes from the extensive side. You know, if we did say, hey, we think cow triple two is a bit sick, you know what are you going to do ride, ride, you know half a day to go have a look at her and then potentially not find anything wrong. So you know, whether we look at in the future is a different, a different debate, but at the moment we've just stayed really true to that core value prop which is around just the containment and the shifting piece.
0:44:13 - Cal
Right when we think about dairy versus beef, you know, and dairy they're likely to be AI-ing their cows. They need to know when they're in heat With beef cattle. It might be nice to know that, but we've got a bull that's supposed to be taking care of that out there.
0:44:28 - Theo
Yeah, absolutely, it's just a matter of cost and functionality and really, I guess actually that functionality piece is where is it going to be used and how is it going to be used, and is it actually going to be useful when it comes to your system and, eventually, your bottom line?
0:44:43 - Cal
We talked a little bit earlier a couple of weeks for the cows to get used to it and get the system going. In that implementation stage, when the farmer's doing it, cows getting used to it, and they finally get out and they can manage it. What have been some hiccups that farmers have, or is that pretty smooth that transition?
0:45:06 - Theo
I mean, if you'd asked me that question, you know, three years ago, we probably would have had a different answer. But I can proudly say that now it's pretty slick and pretty smooth. You know, we've collared so many cattle now across the world that we've seen every sort of mistake that producers can typically make. Oh yes, not saying we've figured out all of them, but yeah, that process is pretty smooth and slick.
0:45:24 - Cal
But yeah, that process is pretty smooth as luck. Now, when we talk about grazing season, that's going to last so many months. You know we all dream of being able to graze year round. If they bring cattle into a more confined area for winter feeding or something, is that a problem with your old collar?
0:45:43 - Theo
No, no, not at all. I mean on a feedlot. Sure, that's not going to work. I don't know where that would fit in, but it's very common for producers to bale graze with halter, for example. If that's something you want to do, something that we really specialize in and that I can confidently say we we're awesome at is anything to do with strict grazing cover crops, bubble, anything on that side of things people can use the collars for really effectively, just really intensively.
0:46:08 - Cal
You know, graze, graze those areas if that was something they were wanting to do oh yeah, let's say a producer is going cold some cows, they pull that collar off. Is that collar then can be reset and used for another animal, or what's the process for that?
0:46:25 - Theo
yeah, it's sort of collar and process in reverse. You're going to pull that cow in, you're going to take that collar off, you're going to beep it with your phone, unassign it from that cow, put it on your new cow, assign it to her. Easy, done. So that's an immediate process that the producer can do.
0:46:42 - Cal
Oh yes, To the ranches that have implemented it. Do you typically see ranches that are already doing a lot of grazing management the ones implementing it or have you had a fair number that go from set stock and now they're doing this rotational grazing because halter gives them that ability?
0:47:03 - Theo
Look, I think it's been a real combination from what we've seen so far. You know, I think there's a lot of ranches out there, who who would really like to rotation in Graysmoor, but you know, with fencing at 20,000 mile, you know, really difficult with labor, the extensive environments to make polywire just not feasible. I think that's where a huge amount of interest in halter has come from, from producers who know that's something they want to do but they've just never been able to even consider doing it. And then the flip side, there are a bunch of producers, sort of in the Midwest, who are already really intensively and efficiently grazing with a lot of polywire. But you know that comes with a lot of labor and a lot of time. It varies a lot and we've been really pleased to see a lot of that variation. It hasn't been isolated to, you know, a particular sort of segment of the market.
0:47:48 - Cal
Yeah, and I know earlier we talked about, when we think about that fence line for halter, it's not really a polywire, that defines it, just you know, right there it's a little bit more of a zone. How close are we able to get those zones? And how close are we able to get those zones and how close are we able to to grease cattle in an area?
0:48:11 - Theo
Uh, tight again, because we come from a country where strip grazing really intensively is just bread and butter for our systems. It's it's something we've, we're really good at. I think there's two parts to that. First, I guess, for me, something that I found hard to get over when I first joined halter was this notion that a virtual fence doesn't have to be a straight line. You can do whatever shape you want. If you want to make wheel grays or pasture or from a central watering point, awesome If you want to keep them out of this little area of larkspur even easier. So I think there's that side to it as well. You can draw it any shape you want to. We won't let you put cattle in a break fence that's less than one meter squared per head, so that's pretty tight, although we do recommend that you give them a minimum of about three meters squared. Oh yeah.
0:48:53 - Cal
Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't know what kind of poundage that would be per acre, that would be very tight, yeah it would be pretty tight. Yeah, it would yeah.
0:49:05 - Theo
I. I'd be. I'd be shocked to produce it if I found a situation where they wanted to go tighter than that.
0:49:10 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's not much space. As I'm thinking about it, I'm trying to think of the times I've seen a million pounds per acre and I think that would still get that and I could be totally wrong on that. I'm not crazy at that density. So we've kind of wandered around and talked to a lot of things about Halter. Is there anything we didn't cover that you're like, hey, we really need to get this in.
0:49:36 - Theo
You know I think we've covered a lot of ground. I think probably you know people always ask about what makes Halter different and you know what's it like to work with Halter and I think there's a few fundamentalist kind of product things. One virtual fencing is the only part of our business. The solar probably another.
But if you called any single one of our producers anywhere in the world tomorrow and you said what's the best thing about Holter? The first thing they're going to say, I'd put money on it as our customer service. Maybe it's a Kiwi thing, but we love coming up the driveway, we love having a cup of coffee. So I think it's really important that ranchers understand when they do get Holter, the service only starts there. We're going to keep coming up the driveway, keep working with them really closely and I think for us, as we're launching the US, we're working really hard on building that trust and meeting as many people as we can in all these different states. At some we take a lot of pride and we want people to hold us to a really high standard and I just know that it's the first thing that people tend to love about Halter alongside the product is just the service that comes alongside it.
0:50:41 - Cal
Oh, very good, and you brought up a question to my mind when you mentioned coffee. Do Kiwis like to drink coffee, or is it more tea there?
0:50:51 - Theo
What? What's the stance there? Well, we'll take what we're given.
0:50:56 - Cal
Yeah well, I drink most anything If it's, if it's hot, I'm good.
0:51:01 - Theo
Yeah, that's a similar attitude.
0:51:03 - Cal
Yeah Well, theo, it's time for us to transition to our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
0:51:18 - Theo
I'll tell you what. This one is not easy and sorry to some of my professors at university if they ever listened to this. My favorite one is actually a book called the Resilient Farmer. It's about a producer in sort of the top end of the south island, new zealand very dry, arid part of the world, horrific droughts and it talks about his journey implementing another type of feed into his system called lucerne and the challenges that came up with that, and he was really a pioneer for for this type of species in dry land environments and it changed the game for just a vast number of tiwi operators. Amazing reed couldn't recommend him more highly oh, very interesting.
0:51:57 - Cal
That's not one I've had before, so I'm interested. I'll have to look that up awesome yeah, our second question what's your favorite tool for the farm? And I know right off you're going to say halter, because it's a tremendous tool.
0:52:12 - Theo
I've kind of got to. People are annoyed if I didn't say halter. I owe it to our producers. I'm sticking with halter.
0:52:20 - Cal
Right right. Third question what would you tell someone just getting started?
0:52:38 - Theo
Third question why would you tell someone just getting started so much knowledge in the ag space? So you know, get out and offer to help that farmer for a day on their land, really get a sense of what they do, and just keep asking questions as my biggest bit of advice to anybody.
0:52:54 - Cal
I think that's great advice, theo. I love just be curious. That gets you so far, yeah. And lastly, where can others find out more about you, more about Holter?
0:53:04 - Theo
A few different ways. I mean, we're pretty friendly and easy to get hold of. Website's a great starting point. It's got contact details for me, for all of our people in New Zealand, australia, so no matter where you are, there's someone to email. You'll find my face on there somewhere with my email and phone. I'm pretty good on comms, so any questions, we're an open book. Select me an email and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that anybody has out there.
0:53:26 - Cal
Wonderful Theo. We appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today.
0:53:30 - Theo
No, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
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