Useful Information
Updates on Virtual Fence
For the past three years, Mushrush Ranches has been using virtual fence initiated through a partnership with The Nature Conservancy, Kansas State University, and other various conservation organizations to study the effects of livestock access on bird habitat and populations of various species in the tallgrass biome. Though the study is still in progress, enough data was collected and analyzed to offer some preliminary insights in the summer of 2024. The primary takeaway from the data is that creating habitat for wildlife is more nuanced than simply removing livestock from the landscape. Different species fill different niches in the landscape. Some of those species preferred the undisturbed forage masses of the livestock exclusion areas while others preferred the areas where livestock impact was present. This reality highlights another potential use for the virtual fence systems to easily create conservation areas for wildlife habitat within an existing pasture.
A NEW AND IMPROVED COLLAR
With the experience gained by utilizing collars in the research project, we understand what we need from a virtual fence system. Intuitive user experience in the software along with a dedicated smartphone app is important as we often make changes in the pasture. The ability to tightly control animals to reach our grazing goals is also a top priority. This fall we were approached by Halter, a virtual fence company based out of New Zealand, who had a product that promised to meet our specifications. Excited by the features Halter offered including directional control, a collar with renewable power through a solar collar and cattle prompts to bring cattle back into their holding zone were tremendous improvements over our old collar. In November, we collared 200 fall cows and are using Halter to intensively graze cool season grasses with our fall pairs. The cows are moved daily in paddocks as small as 2 acres. The lack of fences has allowed the calves to creep ahead of the cows picking the best feed and lounge in the fresh, undisturbed grass. As the cows learned how the collars worked, a few clever cows found out how to “game the system” by running across the barrier at full speed. A short call to customer service and the offending cows had their individual collar settings tweaked until they no longer escaped. We have been extremely pleased thus far with the Halter support team, collars, and operating system and are planning on expanding the coverage of the system to a large portion of our native pasture.
Bottom line is that virtual fence is giving us adaptability we didn’t have before. With the new collars, (and the potential they have shown) we already have a long list of things to try from rehabbing damaged areas of pastures to creating burn areas and improving the forage utilization across our pastures. We are excited to see the potential of this technology on our ranch and to share what we learn with all of you.
Here are just a few images from the Halter app and from collar instillation. If you have any questions about virtual fence or Halter, please contact us at info@mushrushranches.com.
