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Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
00;00;13;03 - 00;00;38;06
Brad
Welcome to The Moos Room. Another beautiful spring day here in Minnesota. The grass is growing, which I'm surprised it's kind of still up and down with temperatures one day. We still have 40 degrees here in Minnesota, and we get hot again the next day. But the grass is actually growing, and I think we'll probably be going to pasture next week.
00;00;38;06 - 00;00;58;25
Brad
So about a week and we'll be on grass. Some of the pastures that I looked at are actually doing pretty good. They're 6 to 8in tall already, so there's going to be lots of grass, but we've maybe had some winter kill. I looked at one of the pastures where we had some orchard grass and some others, and we're it needs some help.
00;00;58;25 - 00;01;19;27
Brad
I think we're maybe going to rip it up and put some warm season grasses there because it is not doing very well. But anyways, we're getting close to grazing. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about some grazing stuff or virtual fencing. So a lot of people know that I like technology and virtual fencing is one of those.
00;01;19;28 - 00;01;43;28
Brad
And we're going to start doing some things. So first off, if you're in Minnesota or the Upper Midwest and want to come to a virtual fencing field day, I'm having one. Tuesday, May 19th starts at 10 a.m. at our research center in Morris. We're going to have some people there that are going to be talking about virtual fencing.
00;01;44;01 - 00;02;01;25
Brad
I'll briefly talk a little bit about some of the things that I've done with virtual fencing. And then we're going to go out and see the cows. I'm going to put virtual fencing on the milking cows next week, actually, and we're going to see how this works. I am quite excited about this. So I tried it last year and I'll talk a little bit about that.
00;02;01;25 - 00;02;39;28
Brad
But I wanted to really talk briefly today about what virtual fencing is. And some of the fencing companies that are that have these collars or devices that help keep cows or goats or sheep or you name it in. And we'll talk a little bit about the cost and what all of these costs are from these different companies. So virtual fencing is a tool that utilizes digital fence boundaries with GPS enabled collars or ear tags to really manage movement of grazing animals.
00;02;39;28 - 00;03;08;26
Brad
And this is very popular in the beef world or gaining in popularity in the beef world. A lot of dairy people are asking about this as well. Recently I got some funding to study virtual fencing and will obviously be talking more about that as the time goes on. Over the summer, as I put three different virtual fencing systems into our research center to really test it out and see where we go from a dairy perspective.
00;03;08;26 - 00;03;45;08
Brad
But really, these virtual fencing designs and connectivity, they vary a lot by vendor, but basically they all work with the same principles. So an animal is fitted with often a collar. And basically this color communicates the livestock position to an online management platform, either by a tower that you have base station or cellular service. And these basically platforms are used to create these virtual fences which contain the animals.
00;03;45;08 - 00;04;18;25
Brad
So you can have them in all out of certain areas and you can move them as well. More often than not, these are worn as collars and they're really designed for cattle. Really. I think it's recommended that you don't put virtual fencing on calves. Really. We would say about under 500 pounds because they're just too small. These collars can be 2 to 3 to 4 pounds and these animals are still growing.
00;04;18;25 - 00;04;41;07
Brad
So it would require a lot of adjustments in these growing calves to be able to do that. Obviously it takes a little bit of adjustment as well in yearlings and a little bit older. I know we had to do some adjustments in our yearling animals that we had it on because a few of them fell off, and so it wasn't as as tight as what it should have been.
00;04;41;07 - 00;05;08;23
Brad
So how does a virtual fence keep these animals in? Well, they use audio tones and electric cuz I guess so. They're all safe and effective and they provide some stimuli to the animals. Somebody said, well, how strong is the electric shock that these animals might get? I don't know, I haven't felt what I've thought about it, but I haven't convinced anybody else to take a caller outside of the virtual fence and see what the shock is.
00;05;08;23 - 00;05;35;07
Brad
But the electrical cue would be very similar to a 6 or 8 volt electric fence. So it's going to give a little bit of a shock. Obviously not a big one, but it's going to give a little bit of an electric cue. So basically the audio cues warn the animal that they're approaching this boundary. And if it continues towards the boundary or past it.
00;05;35;07 - 00;06;05;08
Brad
So outside of the virtual fence then it gets an electrical stimulant but it doesn't keep going. You know, if an animal escapes from the virtual fence, they're obviously limited and it stops at some point. So how do we implement virtual fencing? Well, cattle, livestock, they require training. So you've got to train the animals. And the training period is used to teach these animals where they're associated with these audio and electrical cues within a physical fence.
00;06;05;08 - 00;06;33;08
Brad
So really during the training period you use a smaller fenced in area. So it's kind of required that the animals interact with the virtual fence boundaries often enough to learn to distinguish the audio and the electrical stimulants. So really during the initial phase, the virtual fence should be overlaid across a physical fence to really to reinforce livestock responses to these cues.
00;06;33;08 - 00;06;57;09
Brad
And then you kind of move, move the virtual fence away from the physical fence. And that's how you really train them. And it's quite effective within a week or more. You don't have too many issues with audio or electrical stimulants. So how did we go about doing this and what did we use? So last summer I had 20 virtual fence collars on some heifers.
00;06;57;09 - 00;07;20;03
Brad
So animals that were getting close to calving. So three, 4 or 5 months from calving. And I just put it on a few because I wanted to see what would happen. So we tried a smaller pasture about an acre and a half that had a physical fence around it, and we put collars on these animals. Of course, they went crazy the first time that they had done this.
00;07;20;03 - 00;07;40;03
Brad
They hadn't ever had any collars on. They all have technology, but they've never had a collar on. So you get this 3 pound collar around their neck and they maybe don't really like it. And I had I had no fence. So I used the no fence system. And we put it on last year in early spring to train these animals.
00;07;40;03 - 00;08;03;13
Brad
And the first day a lot of audio cues, quite a few electrical shocks to the animals. That was the first day once they got used to it. So I had a boundary basically of three sides of a physical fence. And then I had one area open that was the virtual fence boundary. There was still a physical fence, but it was about 30ft beyond that.
00;08;03;13 - 00;08;29;10
Brad
So these animals could interact with the virtual fence at a certain point. And then as the days followed, the audio cues went down, the electrical cues went down. So by five, six days after we put the virtual fence on hardly any of the animals, we're getting audio cues or electrical shocks anymore. That was quite good to have. Within a week.
00;08;29;12 - 00;08;56;16
Brad
These animals were fairly well adjusted to the boundaries, so then we decided to take them out to another pasture where they're going to spend the summer, and we're going to be able to virtual fence these animals. Well, that was maybe a little more difficult. Again, we put them out to a bigger pasture. They started to get a few more electrical cues, some lots of audio cues to the animals.
00;08;56;16 - 00;09;20;10
Brad
And again, it took maybe 5 to 6 days again to readjust to that bigger pasture area because the virtual offense was much larger now than this acre and a half that we used to have. So I'm saying it's going to take a week at least a good week to have the animals adjust down to these audio cues or electrical shocks that that they may get.
00;09;20;14 - 00;09;50;08
Brad
If you're interested in virtual fence, what are some considerations that you think about? Well, there's many different vendors of these virtual fencing systems, and we'll go through those in a second and look at cost. Obviously you have to think about connectivity in your pasture, product availability, and really understanding the capabilities of these systems as well as the limitations is certainly an important part to dealing with this virtual fence system.
00;09;50;08 - 00;10;14;06
Brad
So obviously you can have varying cellular network coverage. So you have to really think about signal strength and signal coverage and how to deal with that. Obviously, if you have lots of hilly ground and animals could be in a in a valley, cellular connection may not be as good, but for the most part, at least for us, we didn't have any issues with any of the the cellular connection.
00;10;14;06 - 00;10;40;28
Brad
You can also get radio connected callers that can work in remote areas. These require a base station or a tower to transmit data, which obviously has limited range depending on topography. If you have hilly or some lots of different woods, if you're doing civil pasturing, that can cause some issues. Obviously, the callers don't require a constant connection to maintain cattle.
00;10;40;28 - 00;11;07;00
Brad
They obviously the programed boundaries continue to work. If you don't have a signal or the signal can be weak, but it can be slower to update the system. Obviously you think about battery life, so battery life can range from a few months to the entire grazing season, depending on how many updates you send on the caller. So we didn't update any of our batteries.
00;11;07;06 - 00;11;31;00
Brad
We put them out there. So these systems have a little solar panel on the collar to really extend the battery life and kind of eliminate the need to replace batteries all the time. So we didn't have any issues at all the whole summer. The solar panel on the the caller actually helped charge the battery and kept everything going.
00;11;31;02 - 00;11;55;23
Brad
I took the batteries out in the wintertime though, took them out in the wintertime, and now we're in the process of charging them all again, making sure they're all at 100%. So when we go back out to pasture, we'll have fully charged batteries. But I think the biggest thing that you have to think about when investing in a virtual fence system is understand how it complements a grazing system and how it can enhance your system.
00;11;55;23 - 00;12;18;17
Brad
You know, well, is it going to reduce labor? What kind of pastures are you grazing? Are you grazing just perennial pastures? Are you grazing cover crops or different fields after that? Do you have permanent pasture around all of your system or grazing system? Because that's important. But I think there's lots of different benefits to virtual fencing. So let's talk about cost.
00;12;18;17 - 00;12;43;12
Brad
So I've there's a few places that you can look online to find different cost. The University of Nebraska or Ndsu has done some virtual fencing and they've reported some costs. Now these are from a few months ago, so kind of in February. But I did look up a few that that I can access. So let's talk about the four virtual fence systems here that we can get in the US and around the world.
00;12;43;15 - 00;13;10;01
Brad
So you have vents and that's from Merck there. You need a base station to have this. So you have the caller. The cost of the caller is leased. So the cost is included in the subscription fee. So a subscription fee is $50 a year per caller for the vent system. Do you have $10,000 base station $50 a year per caller?
00;13;10;02 - 00;13;38;15
Brad
Obviously they give sound and electrical cues, and the system weighs about 2 pounds. And they would really like for you to have more than 500 head to be able to purchase this. So maybe the smaller herds are probably not using vents because the $10,000 base station is really expensive. So the next one is and that's from Gallagher, and the cost of the collar is $299.
00;13;38;15 - 00;14;10;17
Brad
If you're getting less than 100, you're getting more than 100 of them, about $250. So with you can have the cellular or base station. The base station is $5,500. A subscription fee per caller per year is $24. So all of these fence systems have a subscription fee, so $24 a year per caller. For Gallagher, an advantage here with the Gallagher system, because it has both a cellular system and a base station system, and the caller weighs about 5 pounds.
00;14;10;17 - 00;14;32;19
Brad
So halter it's another one developed in New Zealand as well. And the cost of the caller is basically it's leased. It's the cost is included in the subscription fee. So these are obviously solar and rechargeable batteries that go around the neck of a cow. So with the halter system you need a base station. So they do not have a cellular network.
00;14;32;20 - 00;15;00;21
Brad
It's a base station only. So the callers transmit to a base station. And that's how which goes back to the network to be able to track the virtual fencing of these animals. So the base station is $4,500 and you have a $50 a month internet fee per site and about $1,000 delivery fee. So about $5,500 again, for the base station there.
00;15;00;22 - 00;15;26;23
Brad
The subscription fee per caller is $6 per caller per month. So if you have six months worth of grazing, you're going to pay $36 for those six months. And the last one is no fence. So it's a Norwegian company. You have a collar around the cow, about 3 pounds, and I just looked up. The collar is $309 per caller, so a little bit more expensive than some of the other systems.
00;15;26;23 - 00;15;54;00
Brad
It's a total solar system, cellular only, so you don't need a base station at all. The subscription fee is $45 a year. So when you buy these colors, the first year is included. But after that, $45 a year per caller. So you have to think about that as you're thinking about putting these systems in. So if you do some cost comparisons with these that Ndsu and Nebraska have figured out.
00;15;54;07 - 00;16;21;26
Brad
So the estimated cost in dollars per head per month for the vent system is $7.50. No fence, about $8 each system $7 with a base station or around $6 with a cellular network and halter is $11 per head per month. So if you think about a six month grazing season, so what is the cost over a six month grazing season for these?
00;16;21;26 - 00;16;46;02
Brad
So vents you're at about $45. No fence 49 Gallagher with a cellular network 37 and halter 66. So there are some differences in in cost. And that's really one thing that we're going to be trying to figure out is do these systems make sense. Can you afford to put them on your farms? What is the cost? What is the true cost?
00;16;46;03 - 00;17;10;04
Brad
Obviously I just talked about some cost these other two universities have figured out for us, but it might be different. These are in beef systems. What about for a dairy system where we're moving animals all the time, every single day. So we're really going to try and keep track of fencing as well. How much time and effort it takes to fence these different pastures.
00;17;10;04 - 00;17;31;24
Brad
And we'll try to figure out, you know, do these huge upfront cost 250 to $300? Does it make sense to be able to do that? I think virtual fencing is quite the hot topic in the livestock world right now, especially in the beef world. And dairy producers are asking me about it, so we're going to try and figure it out.
00;17;32;00 - 00;17;59;05
Brad
Well, if you think about cost as well, there was kind of a recent extension bulletin put out by New Mexico State that looked at the cost of these. And if you think about annual cost per cow, a virtual fence system is about $93 and a physical fence system about $188 per cow. So this New Mexico research found that it's half the cost to have a virtual fence system compared to a physical fence system.
00;17;59;05 - 00;18;28;07
Brad
So it'll be really interesting to see what happens and how we can look at these systems to see if they make them work. And we're going to explore these different systems as well from a dairy perspective and really figure out do they work and will they make sense for farm. So with that, I hope you learned a little bit about virtual fencing and some of the companies that are being able to sell virtual fence to farmers in the US and around the world, so we'll see where we go.
00;18;28;11 - 00;18;54;00
Brad
I'm kind of excited to be able to do this and put virtual fencing systems in our cattle. So with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the room that's thp MLS at Edu, or find us on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or, WC Rocky Dairy.
00;18;54;07 - 00;18;59;28
Brad
And with that, I hope you have a great week. The sun is shining and take care by.