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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.
Welcome to the Moos Room. It's raining again this weekend. We've had a lot of rain here in the last little while, and it's certainly helping the pastures. Man, things are greening up again. This summer in August it was pretty tough here. But we've been still grazing our cows, and it's September 26th.
There's plenty of grass to keep going, probably I would guess for another month, and the heifers will graze all of that as well. So this rain has been helpful in keeping the pastures going. All done with corn silage. Everything's ready, just waiting for everything to dry down for the harvest to harvest some corn as well But one thing I wanted to kind of talk about that's been on my mind and it keeps popping up and lots of farmers keep asking me, and especially grazing dairy farmers and grazing beef farmers, and that's virtual fencing.
And I've been working on some virtual fencing stuff. At least this past summertime, we went a little more crazy in it and had it on quite a few heifers. So I wanted to just give a brief overview of what we've done this summer, kind of what we've seen with the virtual fencing and where we're gonna go into the future.
So I've had virtual fencing. I just had 20 callers back in 2025, and I have the no fence system, at least so far. And so I'm only gonna talk about what's happened with the no fence heifers, uh, because I was able to get a lot of the good data and that's a, a benefit that I like about the no fence system is I can download the data and they say that the data is, is the farmer's and so I can grab all of the information related to pulses and audio cues and GPS coordinates.
You name it, I have it. So We put no fence on a bunch of heifers this past summer. Had it on 30 springing heifers and so I had some undergraduate interns that were looking to do some studies, and we looked at the behavior of these heifers and how it related to some of the audio cues and pulses and, and you name it.
So we did this across the grazing season, about three months. So from about June 10th to August 19th, and that was the kind of summer period that we focused on. There was 27 heifers that we, we put it on, and these students went out a few times a week and during the day and actually watched these heifers.
So they sat in the pasture from a distance and recorded at certain times what an animal was doing. Were they grazing? Were they standing, walking, lying, huddling, fly avoidance behaviors, and some of the other, uh, things that were doing with these heifers. Now, 70% of the time, these heifers with the grazing no fence collars on were grazing or standing.
So you know, that's, I guess that's what the heifers are going to do. About 12% of the time, they found that there was fly avoidance behaviors, and fly avoidance is always a trouble in a grazing herd and, and what we were doing. More often than not, heifers were grazing more in the afternoon hours and standing less and walking more.
So they tended to graze more in the afternoon compared to the morning hours Across the summer June they were grazing about 36% of the time, July 41%, August 51%. So as the summer went on, they were grazing a lot more and doing a lot less standing around trying to figure out. Obviously in June, cows go back on pasture.
They're used to TMR. They kinda go, "Well, what's all this stuff? What am I supposed to do?" So they had to learn to regraze again, in which they did, but grazing was a little bit less, uh, from a time standpoint in June compared to August. They were doing a little more fly avoidance behaviors in June and August as well, so that probably had an effect on fly pressure
So we compared with all of these behaviors that we recorded and obviously there's some differences in heifers and we'll talk about some of the no fence data here in a minute. But basically based on the comparisons That these no-fence heifers spent most of the time grazing or standing and were rarely isolated.
So they were all kind of doing this in a group fashion. Fly avoidance and huddling were probably secondary behaviors which indicated that fly and environmental conditions likely influenced their behaviors. So then we compared it with all of the fly data to see what we could find, and we kind of matched the behavioral data with the no fence data
And basically what we found, obviously There was audio warnings and pulses that these heifers had, and we matched them up. Basically, pulses, which are basically the electric shock, they had 10 percentage points less grazing and 4% more walking. So basically when they were getting pulsed, they were doing walking and they ne- weren't necessarily doing a lot of grazing at the time, so they were trying to figure out where they were going and where the fence was.
The fly avoidance behaviors kinda showed a weak positive correlation with pulse rate, so not much indicative of fly avoidance with problems with grazing or audio cues or, or pulses. Obviously, the pulses were concentrated on certain observation dates, and that really probably dealt more with moving of the fence.
I think when these heifers, when we moved the fence, they probably had a few more pulses because they had to figure out where the virtual boundary was again. But really, it didn't really affect much at all. Overall, we found that there were, you know, certain behavioral patterns in these heifers, but they didn't really demonstrate that the no fence caused any behavioral changes or problems, which is a good thing.
So it basically said no fence not causing behavior issues in these heifers
So what are some observations that we found? Animals that tended to graze less or have less grazing time probably had more pulses and audio cues compared to heifers that were grazing
Heifers that had more fly avoidance behaviors observed had more pulses. So they were trying to escape the flies and probably getting caught in where the virtual boundary was. And we saw that for walking as well. So animals that were doing more walking tended to have more pulses. And you would expect that as we're walking around trying to find the behavioral border of this virtual fence.
So I also brought this to the, the workers one day. They were curious about what was going on and all this virtual fencing stuff that we did and, you know, the employees really like it. Um, it's, it's been very interesting to see and, and I think they've done quite well with it and probably want me to put way more virtual fencing on the whole herd, uh, because then we don't have to do any physical fencing.
And we might get there. We might get there one day and it's, uh, we're increasing more and more throughout the time period. Here's a few observations that we see from the no-fence data on just these heifers. Basically, activity, we can measure activity levels in these animals. The lowest activity is around midnight and five AM, so they're not doing much, obviously resting during the overnight hours.
And activity increases throughout the morning hours, kind of plateaus at about nine AM to five PM, and then increases a lot more. So around the evening hours is when they're probably doing a lot more grazing in this group
Now, we see some interesting patterns of audio cues, learning curves with all of these animals. Now, there are certain animals that have way more warnings or audio cues and pulses than some. There's a few heifers, one in particular, uh, if you average it out, she's getting about forty audio cues per day. So she likes to push that virtual fence boundary, no doubt.
And some of them are thirty to forty audio cues per day, and some of them are two or three or one, not many at all. Now, if you look at the pulses, we see the same thing. The heifer that had the most audio cues, she's probably getting about two pulses per day, so, you know, it's not really shocking these animals a lot, which is basically telling you once that heifer gets to the virtual boundary, she's getting an audio cue, which tells her, "Hey, it's time to turn around and go back before you get a pulse."
So they're... have learned to the b-boundary of this virtual fence. But I asked about this one heifer that's getting forty audio cues per day, and they were like, "Oh yeah, we've seen her. She just takes it. She just stands there and takes... You can see that she maybe gets a little jolt, and then she just moves on with her life."
So, which is interesting. I've seen some heifers down there where they get a, a pulse, and they turn around and go back the other way quite quickly. But the workers tell me that this heifer just stands there and takes it, so I'm not sure what's going on, if she's carrying a little more flesh over her neck where the collar is that she's able to take this, or maybe there's just some behavioral patterns with her where she just deals with it, which is kind of interesting.
So you see a lot of differences. We probably see more audio cues in the heifers than what we did in the dry cows. The dry cows seem to be a little more calm when they're grazing the virtual fencing. Eh, maybe we decided to give them a little bit more area, so that could have to do with it as well. But there's just a lot of interesting components when it comes to, to this.
I think there's a lot more animal variation in it than what we normally would see or expect, which is kind of interesting as we move on into the future So right now, as far as virtual fencing, we're gonna keep increasing. And I was able to secure some funding, uh, from various sources To increase the use of virtual fencing and do more research with that here at our research center.
So we're gonna keep expanding with the NoFence system as well. Um, they've just come out with a new collar that was launched here in September and won't be available till probably March, but I've, uh, pre-ordered some as well. Um, basically it... One of the, the cool features of this is it does a lot more health and behavior information.
It's their N3 collar, which monitors activity, rumination, heat cycles, and provides automated calving and heat detection. So that'll be interesting to see how well that, uh, plays in with the system as well, and I've ordered 40 of those new, uh, collars to kind of boost our, our virtual fencing and tried to have it on all of the heifers here.
Those N3 collars right now are $195, kind of an introductory price as we, uh, move into the future. The collars that I have now, which are the cattle collars from NoFence, they're $309. You can also get some sheep and goat collars, which are 239 as well. I might try some of those on some calves or, or younger heifers that maybe have this, "I don't want this big collar underneath their neck," or it seems like carrying around, uh, this information.
We did weigh them one day. They're a couple pounds, so you have a, a couple pounds, uh, hanging around their neck all of the time, and the sheep and goat collar might work better for younger animals. We'll see. I might try that out, uh, next summer as well. Now that's the NoFence system. I've also going to acquire a few more.
Uh, I've got some Gallagher, uh, eShepherd collars, uh, here. They're, they're being charged as we speak, uh, trying to get those on some dry cows this fall just to get some, uh, information related to those and see how that works. We're... I, I like this system. We're, uh, able to have some pre-planned moves and, uh, work with those animals.
It's about a pound more, I think. We did weigh these an- uh, collars. They're about a pound more, uh, to put around those, so the younger heifers, maybe I won't put Gallagher on them. Maybe it'll be on more of the cows and, and, uh, older heifers. But that one, um, excited about to work with as well, uh, to see what I can do with the Gallagher system and, and being able to, to use that, uh, the e- eShepherd and, and Like I said, uh, probably gonna put some of those on next week, so maybe a, a little snippet, uh, into the future I'll, I'll talk about what, what is, uh, what we found with our, uh, E-Shepherd, uh, system, uh, as well.
So I'm kind of excited about that, looking forward to, to seeing, uh, what, what I can do with, with the Gallagher system as well. Also working on, uh, some to get some Halter, and there's a- another one called, um, Moneal, and, uh, looking at, uh, trying to get some of those collars as well here for some studies, uh, next summer, and really trying to figure out what I can do and to help farmers, and really that's, uh, what my goal is here.
There's a lot of interest from farmers and interest in these virtual fencing systems, so we're, we're exploring those, and I know they're out there in the beef cattle world, but we're kind of exploring them from a dairy perspective and, and I'm quite excited to see where we go into the future and, and what we may find and, or what we may not find and how excited the workers are to continue to use these systems in our research and our herd, just for regular herd management.
I think that's one of the things, and we're gonna be trying to account for all that labor and, uh, economics as well So we'll leave it there today. I just wanted to give you a little idea about what some of the things that we've done over the summer and, uh, virtual fencing is one of the hot topics that we're exploring and, and, um, we'll, we'll keep exploring that into the future.
So if you have any comments, questions, scaling, rebuttals, feel free to contact me at The Moose Room. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu, or find us on the web, University of Minnesota Extension or University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or U of M WC ROC Dairy. And with that, I hope you have a great week. Bye.