Dr. Ryan Reuter, OSU Professor of Animal and Food Sciences, focused on beef cattle nutrition and range management, provides us with a rundown of virtual fencing to control cattle movements. Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays is featuring comments from his conversation with our own Stevie White at the Beef Cattle Summit in Ada, Oklahoma.
Dr. Reuter explained that Virtual fencing works similarly to how invisible dog fences work, only the cattle systems are all based on GPS. The system can be used on cattle, sheep, or goats, and the animal is fitted with a GPS collar. Using software, a producer can draw the desired perimeter on a map.
“It is pretty effective, once you get animals trained,” he said. “There are a few animals that we have found that always want to challenge the fence; sometimes, we need to cull an animal or two that won’t train to our fence, but most animals do pretty well.”
He described a slightly different mindset when using a virtual fence because with a physical fence, the animals are either in or out; however, virtual fences are a little more ambiguous. “We don’t recommend it for perimeter fencing, yet,” he said. “We really only recommend it for interior pasture divisions and grazing management, because you have to be willing to tolerate shades of grey where the boundaries are.”
Some animals will stray outside of the boundary a bit, then come back in and perhaps go back out again. “You have to be willing to tolerate excursions out of the grazing area that you want them in,” he said. “It’ll happen occasionally, but a lot of the virtual fence companies and the data that we have collected show 90 percent containment success over time.”
A major benefit of virtual fencing is when the terrain makes physical fencing difficult to impossible. In some cases, virtual fencing is less expensive than having physical fences erected in challenging terrain. Another benefit is the flexibility to easily change the boundaries to better manage grazing.
“It is very easy to fence out a riparian area or a specific area that has toxic plants or an area that you want cattle to avoid,” Dr. Reuter said. “Once you have the virtual fence equipment, it’s easy to add those areas to it. Plus, when you have a GPS transponder on your animals, you know where your animals are all the time.”
OSU has conducted research projects on private operations and admitted that all new technology gets mixed reviews. “Some people really like it and are progressing with it, and upgrading to newer versions of collars that are coming out. For some people, it didn’t fit their management style, and we got feedback on that. That is always valuable information to have,” he said.
Even still, he said that the technology is being rapidly adopted in the industry. He advised interested producers to do their research and proceed slowly to determine if it will add value to their operations.
Besides talking to the various companies selling virtual livestock fencing options, he suggested browsing the rangelandsgateway.org website to learn more.
“That is a website that organizes a bunch of virtual fence information that several universities have worked together on,” Dr. Reuter shared. “Go to the website, then search it for ‘virtual fence’ and there is a bit of accumulation of information there: research papers, videos, and lots of that kind of stuff. That is probably the best place to look.”
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