Embracing Innovation: Journey with Halter's Virtual Fencing Technology

by Ted Miller

Our virtual fencing journey began almost two years ago when I reached out to New Zealand-based virtual fence company Halter to enquire about the possibility of using their virtual fence collars on our pasture-based dairy herd. Halter, founded in 2016, had close to 100,000 dairy cattle collared in New Zealand at the time with aspirations to bring their product to the US beef cattle market. As they solidified plans to launch in North America, we took the opportunity to study the technology more closely and decide if there was potential for a positive return on investment should we choose to implement it on our farm. Fast forward to April of 2024 after deciding this was a tool with positive potential for us, Halter was ready to begin collaring cattle on their partner farms in the US.

We collared the milking herd in late April and our bred heifer group in mid-July, giving a total of approximately 700 head collared between the two groups. The two main functions we were looking to initially utilize were the virtual fencing capability along with the automatic cattle shifting function. This would allow us to break paddocks more aggressively than in the past without the labor associated with running temporary polywire fences.  We also were looking forward to being able to shift the cattle from the paddock to the milking parlor as well as from paddock to paddock without the need for an employee to manually spend the time pushing them with a four-wheeler. I was quite amazed at how quickly the cattle acclimated to both functions. Within 24 hours they were respecting virtual boundaries and by the end of the first week they were completing shifts with no human intervention. One very positive feature of these collars is they are solar powered so there’s no need to remove collars for battery replacement. Along with its virtual containment capabilities, Halter’s product for dairy farms also monitors cow behavior including grazing, resting, rumination, and heats. This data allows us to identify open cows, determine calving dates of pregnant cows based on last observed heats, as well as identify any health issues that may show up in reduced grazing and rumination times before we would necessarily see the cow display other clinical signs.

Before we committed to investing in the collars, my goal was to capture around a third of our investment cost back in labor savings and the other two-thirds in increased grass utilization resulting in higher forage dry matter intake by the cows. This would allow us to make more milk from homegrown grazed forages resulting in more generated revenue while tempering supplemental grain intake, ultimately generating a wider operating margin. After the first few weeks of breaking paddocks virtually, I was taken back by how much we could slow our grazing rotation because we could utilize available forage in each paddock much more efficiently. This allowed us to set more acres aside from the rotation for baleage production. We’ve since begun taking out many of our cross fences, which gives us more flexibility in our virtual breaks with the bigger paddocks. 

Aside from a cattle control device, the collars working alongside the Halter app are designed to be a holistic pasture management tool.  My complete understanding of this part of the technology remains rather undeveloped and I’m attempting to climb this learning curve as quickly as I can. The app gives me the ability to enter estimated pasture cover volumes for each paddock through either plate meter measuring or general ‘eyeball' estimation. I then also take photos of residual cover in each paddock when cows move out and the app generates an average residual cover for that paddock based on the photo data. I can enter my desired grazing round length and the app will calculate average daily growth rates for each paddock so I can get a better understanding of how much forage is available for planned upcoming grazings in the round. This information is helpful in determining which paddocks need to be removed from the current grazing rotation and set aside for hay harvesting. 

My experience with virtual fencing remains in infancy at this point. However, I can certainly say based on what I’ve seen I’ve come to respect this technology as a powerful tool in manipulating the placement of grazing cattle and when coupled with app-based grass management capabilities, it allows us to operate our grazing management at a level that was previously unachievable.