The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;44;13
Brad
And welcome to the Moose Room. Brad. Here again on a lovely fall day. It is almost 80 degrees out here in western Minnesota. It is the 26th of September as a Friday. So almost October and we are still grazing the herd here in Morris. And we've been actually grazing since May 13th. So a long grazing season and I haven't supplemented the cows at all for the whole summer.

00;00;44;16 - 00;01;09;16
Brad
They've just been on full 100% grass, so grass fed and it's been crazy. The grass is still growing now we're going to start supplementing them on Monday. I think the energy levels in the grass are getting quite low. They're not maybe doing as well as what I think they should. So we're going to start supplementing cows. Maybe feeding them in the barn at night and grazing during the day just to extend some of the pastures.

00;01;09;16 - 00;01;35;15
Brad
But I bet you we could graze well into early November here with all of the moisture and the sunshine. If it's 80°F today, we're still growing grass. There's plenty of moisture in the ground, and it's just crazy. It's been one of those years where we've had a lot of rain. I think we've had 38in this summer, which is more than what we have in a normal year.

00;01;35;18 - 00;02;04;11
Brad
So it's really crazy, very crazy. But I wanted to talk about a project or kind of demonstration that I was doing this summer, just to see if it worked. And that's virtual fencing. I was curious about that. You know, I've heard about virtual fencing and what kind of go through a little bit about what what's been happening and kind of some of the first information that I seen in our herd and then kind of where I'm going to go next year with it and, we'll, we'll see, I guess.

00;02;04;11 - 00;02;38;03
Brad
But virtual fencing obviously has kind of grown. It's interesting though. I remember seeing it on Clarkson's Farm. If you haven't seen Clarkson's Farm, I suggest you go see it. It's quite hilarious. It's from England. Jeremy Clarkson is farming, in in the Cotswolds. And in his episode, I think, May 30th, he introduced no fence virtual fencing for his goats to fence certain areas.

00;02;38;05 - 00;03;03;00
Brad
And it was interesting to see how that happened on that farm as far as grazing. And we'll talk about no fence and maybe a little bit about why I have chosen that one, at least for the start, with our virtual fencing. But really, I think for us, the main reason to get into virtual fencing is really labor.

00;03;03;03 - 00;03;25;04
Brad
We spend a lot of labor trying to fence animals. We we try to graze places that are difficult sometimes and it's difficult to fence or fences keep breaking all of the time. So I wanted to be able to graze some of those areas and see what would happen if we were to put virtual fence on on those animals.

00;03;25;04 - 00;03;54;01
Brad
So that's what we did. And I found out about, virtual fencing. I attended the Grass Works Grazing conference in Wisconsin Dells, in February, and, or maybe it was January, but I saw that they had some virtual fencing there. A vendor had no fence virtual fencing there, and I talked to him a lot about that. I was very intrigued because I kept getting questions from farmers.

00;03;54;01 - 00;04;17;22
Brad
I still get questions from farmers about virtual fencing. I think most of the virtual fence that we see happens in beef cattle or goats. Of course, we don't have any of those on our our research site. So the goal is how can we make it work with dairy cattle? So that's what I set out to do. I decided that I was going to get no fence based on the vendor visit that I had there at Grass Works.

00;04;17;22 - 00;04;42;21
Brad
There, I could just get ten callers just to see where we started out with and and go from there. Since then I've, I've actually gotten 30 callers. So we'll, we'll talk about that in a second. So really what kind of a rundown first. What what is no fence and virtual fencing. You know there's other companies out there that are having virtual fence offering here in the US.

00;04;42;23 - 00;05;04;23
Brad
Gallagher has some halter has some. But I think for me, I went with no fence because it was easy. I thought it was easy and and some of the other companies, I had inquired about that and they didn't really have them available right away here in the US, or it wasn't, in my area in Minnesota, I think some of the other ones was based on cost.

00;05;04;23 - 00;05;39;01
Brad
Some of them were very expensive. And we'll talk about cost, how much it cost me to, to do this here in a second. But basically I wanted to be able to fence areas virtually. I think no fence has an app, so I can fence with my phone and not have to really go out there and look at the animals, although we did, but this summer I fenced 20 heifers from early May through early September, all with my phone.

00;05;39;04 - 00;06;10;25
Brad
I didn't do anything else, I just fenced them with my phone and moved the animals myself by moving the virtual boundaries on my phone. And it was easy. Quite easy. So we talk about no fence and that's what I've used. I I've paid for it all. So there's no nobody's given me any money to to say this. This is all I've, I scrounged up some money that I had available and in some, research accounts where I was able to fund myself with, getting 30 callers and pay for it myself.

00;06;10;25 - 00;06;31;12
Brad
So, I'll, I'll put that out there. So this is all Brad's experience on, on my virtual fencing. So basically, how did I get started? Well, first I was able to order the callers online, which, which I liked as well. That was quite easy. I can order more callers online and not have to go through somebody.

00;06;31;12 - 00;06;51;16
Brad
I can just go on to my account, order more of them. I, I started with ten at the beginning and then gradually increased as the summer went on. But once I got the callers, I was you have to charge the, the batteries. So basically it takes about 24 hours to charge each of the batteries. They don't come full.

00;06;51;18 - 00;07;14;19
Brad
So I had to charge each of the batteries for each of the callers. Then basically everything was starting the callers and picking out which colors I wanted to use. Obviously I had to go to train the animals. So one day we put collars on heifers. I decided I was going to put it on heifers and that was an interesting day.

00;07;14;21 - 00;07;34;18
Brad
We put it on the heifers, close by. We were going to put them in a kind of a training pasture where there was a physical fence. As well a smaller area that we could send them out, and we put the callers up on the heifers and mayhem. They did not like that at all. These are a little bit larger, collar.

00;07;34;18 - 00;08;10;18
Brad
It's kind of a larger collar that hangs underneath the neck. It's got a little solar panel attached to it so it can charge while it's out in the pasture. And it's got a metal, kind of collar that goes around. Obviously, that's what's used to, maybe shock the animals if they talked about getting into virtual fence. But it maybe took a good day for the animals to settle down and try and figure out what was around their neck and, obviously with anything, training is required.

00;08;10;18 - 00;08;32;19
Brad
So we put the collars on. We didn't want to make sure that the neck strap was too loose or too tight. And then we basically started to train the animals. So how did we go about training the animals? Well, I'd had a, a Norwegian woman come over, actually, she was just here visiting, and, we talked about training animals and how to go about training and how to set up all of the training.

00;08;32;21 - 00;09;02;17
Brad
So we did this in a small pasture, close to our barn, and we tried to train the animals for about two weeks. I think they will tell you maybe one week, but I decided that I would do it two week training. Basically. So they learn how to turn around and then avoid the electric pulse, and once in a while, and then they'll become more successful at, not getting, pulsed or audio cues.

00;09;02;20 - 00;09;28;18
Brad
I guess for the training to be successful, we want the animals to feel safe. So basically we want it to be within this physical fenced area, create an area where they couldn't get to so they could get some audio cues, a very small area, and then they could kind of figure out what it means to get an audio cue as well as, electric pulse and this pasture.

00;09;28;21 - 00;09;54;24
Brad
When you're training, it must be very small or small enough for the animals to frequently come in contact with the no fence boundary the first few days. Obviously, if you train them in this big pasture, they're not going to get any audio cues or electric pulses. So you want it to be small enough so you can have that available to them, but you want to provide enough space so they can eat and drink and be calm.

00;09;54;24 - 00;10;21;22
Brad
And so they're not always, getting, audio cues all the time as well. What about a boundary? So we put boundaries around, when we started to train and and really the, the grazing boundaries kind of fluctuate somewhat. So these are, basically it's GPS collars, so it's, it's looking for, satellites in the sky. And so it's not, working that way.

00;10;21;22 - 00;10;46;01
Brad
So basically obviously the, the zone depends on the accuracy of GPS positions. So is the, you know, fence going to be quite accurate? Well, I tried that right away and realized that you can't maybe put the virtual fence boundary right at the physical fence that we have. You know, we have a perimeter fence. And I put the virtual fence boundary right there.

00;10;46;07 - 00;11;14;15
Brad
That's probably not what we what we should do, because these boundaries can fluctuate somewhere 3 to 6ft, or 1 to 2m. So basically you maybe want to have the virtual fence if you have a perimeter fence just a little bit outside of that close to it, so they can get an audio cue, but maybe not right on that, I think I've probably found that the boundary was somewhere around that 3 to 4ft.

00;11;14;18 - 00;11;58;16
Brad
Sometimes, because when I looked at it and I look on my phone, it's like, wow, that heifer standing outside of the fence when she's actually not outside of the fence. So sometime the GPS receiver is maybe not quite as accurate. And obviously that is because of many different reasons, because if there's buildings around, if there's rocks, if there's trees, obviously sometimes that can reflect satellite signals and obviously, that can be a problem when you're trying to determine this boundary and you have to put a collar on every animal that you have, you can't just put it on a few of them.

00;11;58;22 - 00;12;26;12
Brad
So everybody within the virtual fence has to have a collar. So let's talk about the collars and how much they cost. Well what is the cost. Obviously there's everybody has to have a collar. So that's going to cost you. As of right now the cost is $289 plus the subscription. And for the first year subscription is included. So about $345 per collar.

00;12;26;12 - 00;12;59;14
Brad
So $345 times 30 animals that I have high $9,000 for 30 animals. So they can be expensive. They can be expensive. Now no fence has some, farmer referral program. So you can, refer a farmer and get some 10% off. There's also cost share programs within different states or granting agencies. Conservation innovation grants. There's conservation easement programs equipped funding.

00;12;59;16 - 00;13;27;13
Brad
You can get for virtual fencing. There's lots of different places that you can get some state funding. Minnesota, Iowa, California has fencing programs to be able to purchase some of these fencing systems, so they can be a little expensive and a little daunting when you're thinking about putting virtual fencing on there, and then afterwards you have a subscription every year.

00;13;27;16 - 00;13;55;16
Brad
Obviously, a lot of things are are, coming along with subscriptions now, and we have to deal with that as well for a subscription. After the first year, it's going to cost about $45 per caller. So obviously that includes updates, many other things, but that can be something that you have to think about as well, is that subscription fees are going to cost a little bit to have these collars.

00;13;55;19 - 00;14;15;00
Brad
And who knows, at some point, you know, I could do some back of the napkin economics and figure that out for the amount of time that we spend, or amount of money that we spend every year on fencing and fencing supplies and poly wire and rails and everything like that, I think the virtual fencing might pay for itself.

00;14;15;03 - 00;14;41;13
Brad
I need to do that calculation yet, but I think that it probably would. So let's talk about some of my training and some of the data that we got. So I started training on April 22nd, with 20 heifers. Like I said, had a little rough day, putting collars around them. But once I established this boundary in this within this perimeter that day, we had almost 100 audio cues for these 20 heifers.

00;14;41;16 - 00;15;01;07
Brad
So they were getting a lot of audio cues, about 60 electric pulses. So majority of them were, getting also some electric pulse on the first day. And it says that I had a few escapees, I had two escapees that basically escaped the fence and didn't come back for a little bit. While the next day was much better.

00;15;01;14 - 00;15;25;01
Brad
Audio cues were in half, electric pulses were 30, so in half as well. And then as you keep going on. So if I look at seven days later, virtually no audio cues and no shocks and no escapes. Seven days after training. Now, when I moved the virtual fence a little bit, like I said, I decided to train them for two weeks.

00;15;25;01 - 00;15;57;06
Brad
So I moved the virtual fence, maybe squeezed them a little bit so they would get used to having audio cues from 3 or 4 sides of the fence. Then I had an increase in audio cues, very little 15 audio cues over the 20 animals. So not everybody got an audio cue, a few electric pulses. But really, two weeks after training, there weren't many audio cues and electric pulses in these heifers were very few.

00;15;57;09 - 00;16;32;17
Brad
Really. It was the first three days after we started this, just so the heifers could get used to it. Basically. What is the the audio cue when they get to this no fence boundary, it basically gives them an audio cue and hopefully that they will turn around and not go back to that. An electric pulses given if they don't turn around after a few seconds and an escapee if you get an escapee and we'll talk about that in a second, it's not going to keep shocking them or giving them audio pulses.

00;16;32;19 - 00;16;54;00
Brad
At some point it's going to stop and I think it plays a Norwegian lullaby, but it's not going to continually shock them if they go beyond the virtual fence boundary to that. That's a good thing. After the training, I decided to put them out on a larger fence, much larger fence area about, I think, 7 or 8 acres.

00;16;54;03 - 00;17;16;19
Brad
I decided to put them out on where we were grazing underneath some of our solar panels with with our heifers, and there was lots of grass. And this is the pasture, I think it was about 30 acres in total, for 30 heifers this summer. And like I said, I grazed them throughout the whole summer. But the first few days that I put them out on that pasture, it was like retraining all over again.

00;17;16;22 - 00;17;45;09
Brad
I was getting lots of audio signals, lots of notifications on my phone that animals were getting audio cues. Some were getting a lot of electric pulses. So it's like I had to retrain them all over again. It's like they forgot what had happened when they were put into this bigger fenced area. So that was kind of interesting that I thought that they, they had completely forgotten about, that they have gone through with training.

00;17;45;09 - 00;18;15;24
Brad
It took a few days again. And then they decided that they were okay. And no, no issues whatsoever. And like I said, would go down there, look at the fence, I would move the the boundaries wherever I wanted the cows to move, based on water. I'd fence them out of certain places. So I've basically I treated it like a fence, but we were just using a poly wire, and we didn't have any issues after they were training.

00;18;15;24 - 00;18;42;01
Brad
Really, I would say that there wasn't always one. One time I went to a baseball game in Minneapolis, in Saint Paul, and I was sitting there watching the baseball game, and all of a sudden my phone was just buzzing out of control. And I'm like, what is going on? It told me that all that the heifers were getting audio cues, they were getting electric pulses, and then all of a sudden it said they all escaped the virtual fence.

00;18;42;03 - 00;19;06;15
Brad
I'm like, oh, what's going on? So I texted somebody, what? What's happening? Well, they had brought another group of heifers down there and put them in an adjacent pasture. Now, these heifers weren't virtual fence, but they had put them in the adjacent pasture. And of course, my virtual fence heifers decided that they were going to go talk to their friends.

00;19;06;17 - 00;19;30;10
Brad
And so they all ran down there to see what was going on. And so they were all getting pulsed and electric cues, audio cues on them, because we had put animals right next door. So maybe that wasn't a good decision on our part was to put animals right next to these virtual fence ones. So lesson learned. You have to, pay attention because those animals are just going to run.

00;19;30;10 - 00;19;47;13
Brad
You know, they had 20 acres to run in and they didn't know that there was a fence there. There was a virtual fence, but there wasn't a poly wire, so they just kept on running. Now, if I look at the data across the five months that I had virtual fence on these heifers, it's interesting. I totaled it all up.

00;19;47;14 - 00;20;11;29
Brad
One heifer had 610 audio cues. That's 3 or 4 a day. The heifer also had 80 electric pulses, so she really wanted to test the fence out. She was a roamer. I really wanted to figure out if virtual fencing was her thing. Some of the other ones, the lowest one, only 130 audio cues. So really less than one per day, 22 electric pulses.

00;20;12;06 - 00;20;37;03
Brad
So you can see there's a lot of variation in these animals and how they are trained, how they learn, you know, to go from 130 audio cues to 600, that's a lot. That's a lot of difference in heifers. But on average, I think these animals were getting less than one electric pulse a day on average. Once they get adjusted to the fence, we didn't really have a problem.

00;20;37;03 - 00;20;56;28
Brad
I think the last few months I was barely getting any audio cues. Once in a while we'd get a an electric pulse on a heifer, but not very often. So it took some time and they were able to really work with with the virtual fence. So one of the questions that I had was, well, how does it work?

00;20;56;28 - 00;21;20;24
Brad
Well on in animals that are in different pastures, if they're got hills or valleys, maybe the GPS doesn't work very well. I think earlier this month no fence kind of unveiled their herd net. It's kind of a color to color communication system. So it kind of enhances the connectivity of its colors in kind of remote areas where maybe cell service, isn't as good.

00;21;20;24 - 00;21;43;04
Brad
So it can help update the animals. A lot faster and, and create those boundaries much easier, when you're moving the fence. But like I said, everything was done with an app, everything was done with an app. And where am I going to go in the future with this? Well, I'll tell you where where we're going, where we're going.

00;21;43;04 - 00;22;11;10
Brad
And it's probably crazy, but I, I'm getting lots of questions about this. So the heifers, the 30 heifers that I had virtual fencing on, well now they're starting to carve. They are becoming lactating cows. And let's just say next grazing season I'm going to put it in milking cows. We're going to see how this works in a milking cow herd.

00;22;11;12 - 00;22;36;23
Brad
I've seen it and in in different posts online, people using it in Europe, in Norway and in lactating cows. So I'm going to try it here. It's going to take a little bit more fencing because our cows may be walk a distance if they walk a half mile to the milking parlor. Well now I've got a fence, the whole lean system and, and do all of that to make sure they're not getting pulsed or audio cues as they're walking through the lanes.

00;22;36;23 - 00;22;58;16
Brad
So that's going to be a brand new learning activity for me. But we're going to try it. We're going to try to graze milking cows with a virtual fence. I think that's that's the way we're going. And I like technology a lot, if you know that. And I think the only way to reduce labor on farms is to move to this virtual technology.

00;22;58;19 - 00;23;20;15
Brad
So we're going to try and and move that way with lactating cows, thinking about putting it in more heifers as well. So we can do some more research and really figure this things out. Kind of as a last caveat, if you're here in the upper Midwest, maybe Minnesota or the Dakotas have an extension colleague. Miranda meehan, she's at Ndsu and she's been on our podcast before.

00;23;20;17 - 00;23;47;16
Brad
She's actually hosting a virtual Fence field day in Streator, North Dakota. It's, at their Ndsu Grasslands Research Center that's maybe just south of Jamestown, North Dakota. So for me, here in Morris, about three hours away, but they're going to talk a full day field day on virtual fencing. Kind of see it in action. Look, it extends live grazing systems.

00;23;47;18 - 00;24;13;04
Brad
How you can use virtual fence to achieve your goals. Have some farmers there. I think I'm going to go to this field day and try and learn a little bit about what's going on in the virtual fencing world. So, hopefully you learned a little bit about virtual fencing. And I didn't ramble too long, but I think for those of us that are grazing cattle, I think virtual fencing is is going to be the the wave of the future.

00;24;13;07 - 00;24;38;18
Brad
And I'm excited to see where we can go in the future. So if you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, we'll leave it there and you can find us on the web. University of Minnesota Livestock Extension, or find us on the web. But, and Rock dairy. So with that, I hope you have a good day. Bye.