Virtual fencing with collars for grazing management. Costs?

Since about 10 years or so, there are several companies developing, testing and marketing virtual fences.

The system works like this: The livestock wear a collar with battery, GPS or mobile network connection, acoustic signal, and electric shock.

If the collar approaches an virtual barrier, an acoustic signal starts. If the animal continues, it gets an electric impulse (weaker than electric fence).
You train your livestock to listen to the audio cues, and then they usually never get shocked.

It seems quite interesting, requiring less fencing (thus better for wildlife), and allowing a fast rotation of pastures if needed (thus reducing overgrazing).

Here a 20 second video illustrating the system


I have never tested the system, but I have no clue about costs. The different companies, who work in different regions, do not publish their costs online. Anyone has an idea of the different products, and their costs?

==> NoFence nofence.no
-Norway based
-cattle, goats, and sheep
-costs?

==> eShepherd from Gallagher
-New Zealand based
-has a solar charger
-cattle
-costs?

==> halterhq
-New Zeeland based?
-has solar charger
-costs?

==> vence from merck.com
-US based
? no idea, cannot access the website without US IP address
-costs?

Interesting question. I was thinking about virtual fences a few months ago for some farmers I know who have a guard Pyrenees who wanders the neighborhood instead of staying with the sheep. What I heard is that just one collar would probably cost hundreds of dollars. :/

I seem to find, as a general rule, that when companies don’t post prices online and make you contact them for a quote, they’re usually selling expensive things. They don’t want to scare you away with the price, so they get you to contact them so they can hand sell it to you and rope you into custom offers. So… red flag one for virtual fence companies, I guess?

Another thing to think about is… what happens when it breaks or malfunctions?

And: how easy is it to fix?

Most people could figure out how to mend a standard electric polynet or poly tape if they tried, but a collar with a computer that connects to a GPS? Way beyond me.

Animals are… well, animals. It helps when they can see the fence. And even then, a goat might get stuck in a fence and then try to go THROUGH it to get out. What about an invisible fence? Sounds even more confusing to an animal.

When poly tape or poly net grounds or runs out of juice, it still presents a psychological barrier to the animal if they’ve been conditioned to it. It can’t stay down forever, but for a little it still keeps the animals wary. An invisible fence that goes away is immediately no barrier at all, not even psychological.

In my mind, several points in favor of the more “traditional” moveable fence: simpler, less expensive, visible…

Oh, and visible to would-be animal thieves as well. And predators! Or, like, a five year old nephew who terrifies your sheep.

But ya know, I could just be a grumpy person who doesn’t like fancy gizmos, who knows :)

I've talked to a few farmers who use the Halter system. It's pretty full-featured and they sell the service to install and configure on an individual farm as much as the gear itself (and I didn't ask the price). The Gallagher offering is still in beta and they're signing up beef operations around the country. Don't know much about it yet but word will start to get out on the bush telegraph as soon as some systems are up and running. I'll ask around my regional regenerative ag group next time we meet and see if anyone has more info.

Hi R, thanks for your thoughts.
About your issue with the dog: It is always a question of costs and available money. How much are the lost sheep worth, which would not have been lost with the guard dog present? Do you have the money available to buy the device?

Apparently, with the sound, the animals learned quickly what it meant, and were not stressed more than with electric fencing (which are more a psychological barrier than a physical one)

And yes, hidden prices often say "expensive", I think they might have different prices depending on location. That's the reason I ask, to get some rough estimates. However, in mountain areas, fencing might be more expensive or even impracticable.

Hi Phil, thanks a lot for the precisions. And thanks as well for asking around at the next meeting, it is always valuable to get info from practitioners, not only the sales pitch.

The thing about traditional fencing, electric or not, is that it always needs maintenance. Over time, the cost of repairing, retensioning, and replacing fences will start to make the cost of a virtual fence setup look pretty attractive. We refenced all of our paddocks over the past two years as we switched to sheep, removing all the electric lines and putting in sheep netting instead, since animals with coats of what's basically a high-grade insulator just push under hot wires and keep going.

It turns out that when sheep aren't eating or resting, they like nothing better than leaning against things and rubbing. All this leaning and rubbing stretches the wire, and now I'm going around pounding in extra warratahs to put tension back on the sagging portions. If I don't, there are a couple who will burrow under and cause me grief. I lost several young fruit trees this spring thanks to a lack of vigilance.

Back when we had electrics, the cattle knew if a run was energised or not - they would get just close enough to feel it. One bull calf, who I named Sparky, would use one of his horns to do the test (I discovered this after the second time I chased him out of the garden). If a line was dead, they'd push through or trample right over it. So I had to make it a habit to check all the wires, all the time, and never assume that things were working even if they were the week before. All it takes is some long, lush grass or a broken branch to put an entire system out of commission. One of our biggest nuisances was spiderwebs...they would build them around insulators, and then a cool morning's dew would provide a path to the post.

Nothing's foolproof. A virtual fence system will have its own weak points and the dependency on technology could be a turnoff to many people. But if you have a big land area with challenging terrain and want the ability to reconfigure your grazing rotation without the expense of changing the physical layout of the fences themselves, this is a compelling option.

I looked into the cost of doing a virtual fence for my dog.

It was not cheap for one animal I can imagine how much a herd of cows, etc would cost.

I ask Mr. Google because he knows everything;

The Wall Street Journal said, The virtual fences cost them $50 per collar a year in rental and battery fees. For 325 cows, that's $16,000 annually. (The many calves on the ranch don't need collars because they follow their mothers.)

That is cheaper than when I check out dog collars and might be pretty good if a person has a small herd compared to the price of fencing.

Interesting, so it is rented, and not sold...

I looked into this topic extensively a few months ago. I spent a good couple weeks researching it, because it's a great idea, and I would love to have it. Unfortunately, none of these companies are very eager to expand into the 3rd world, and since the tech is based on GPS, I believe the companies require permission from the communications agency from any country that they want to do business in. Maybe I'm wrong about that though. Either way, none of them are planning to expand to Peru anytime soon. Basically, I'd have to build my own base station and I can't imagine the nightmare it would be trying to import all the different components for that and then trying to build the thing out. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-gps-rtk
It's just not my wheelhouse.
Plus I have my doubts about the performance in this topography. Likewise, I was able to rule out all the companies (such as NoFence for example) that operate off a cellphone signal, because the signal here is too unreliable.

Here's a post I made on another forum, after spending a while reading about this topic.

I've been interested in this technology for a while now, because I'm looking for a way to rotationally-graze livestock through my silvopasture. I'm in a remote, mountainous part of South America, and the foothills that comprise the property are pretty steep. There's no plumbing available to get water to the tops of hills. That's why it would be nice to use virtual fencing to give the animals access lanes to the creek from each paddock. Electric fencing is a hassle here due to the very irregular topography. So, I was hoping to learn more about the pros and cons of virtual fencing by posting here.

I've been learning a lot on the topic recently, so maybe others can compare notes with me and share experiences. One thing I'm still curious about is if there are any systems on the market that work well in remote locations at the bottom of canyons and deep valleys?

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of the companies are available in my country here in South America. These are the companies I've come across. Most of them seem to not be scaling properly, as deployment seems to be lacking especially for some of the companies that have been around for years. It is not clear to me if they need some special government permits to operate in different countries since they're GPS-based.

Vence - bought by Merck and seemingly only used on a "trial" basis in very rural areas of the USA", which is odd cause they've been around for years. Should be further along by now. I think maybe I read something about trials in Australia.

Basto - An Argentinean brand. They also seem like they're mired in some sort of beta testing phase. I'm not in Argentina, but I contacted that company and they didn't even respond.

E-Shepherd (Gallagher) - New Zealand based, barely getting deployed at the moment. Not likely to land in South America anytime soon.

Halter - Also a New Zealand company. Only available in New Zealand and oddly exclusively aimed at dairy operations. Read one post on this forum of someone who knew a producer who was not satisfied, because the cows kept getting through the fence.

Corral Technologies - US based, just barely getting going. Don't think they're even available yet. Obviously will only be available for USA.

Herd Whistle - Canada based

NoFence - Norway based, but probably the most aggressive of all of these companies in terms of market penetration. Now available in Spain and the USA...I think available in maybe one or two other countries. Not in South America. Doesn't sound very accurate. For example, the webpage says laneways should be a minimum of 30meters wide to avoid unwanted triggering of the collars. A 15m buffer on each side of the animal is way too much room for error. That tells me the system will often be innacurate by 5-10m.

NoFence does not require a base station, and requires that collars be located in areas that could reliably receive a phone call or text message.
It seems a number of the other companies have users install base stations. I'm not sure what the purpose of the base station is. Does the use of base stations, mean that that company's setup uses RTK GPS? If so, that would be an advantage. My property has steep areas, some forested areas, but is not very big. A base station could be located at our tallest hill, but would have to cross through perhaps 100 meters of forest to reach certain areas of the property. Not sure if that is an issue. Main property is 17 hectares and there are a couple adjacent rental properties 7 and 10 hectares respectively. Not every single spot on every single property is direct line of sight to where the base station would be located. As some valleys would be blocked by the top of a hill.

I'm not familiar enough with the tech to know if these scenarios are dealbreakers.

It is still early, but this tech has a lot of potential for restoring grasslands, sequestering carbon, improving soils, etc.  I am hopefully watching.