One of Monte Bottens’s favorite quotes is “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles,” courtesy of Oren Harari, a business professor and author of several management books. The quote suggests that innovation is the result of ongoing improvement.
Looking at Harari’s quote through the lens of grazing livestock, Bottens believes that polywire and its role in managed grazing is the candle; virtual fencing is the electric light.
Bottens direct markets beef and other meats through Grateful Graze, located in Cambridge, IL. The farm is about 35 miles from Deere & Company World Headquarters in Moline. Bottens, the fifth generation, grows non-GMO corn and soybeans along with small grains, specialty crops, hay and grazing crops on 2,500 acres. In 2017, he began integrating livestock into his farming system to help with soil regeneration.
“We’re bringing cattle back to the land, integrating it, trying to mimic the bison herds of 200 years ago in order to regenerate our soil, to overcome all of the degradation that we’ve done and my ancestors have done to that soil,” Bottens said.
In December 2021, he installed his first virtual fence collar on one of his tamer cows, surmising that if there were any glitches he could catch her without having to set up a corral. Five minutes after putting the collar on the cow, she dunked it into a water tub. The collar was fine, and it’s actually still in use.
The collars, and the app that they communicate with, come from Norwegian company Nofence. They recently opened an office in Madison, WI, and Bottens is one of the first farmers in North America to use them. There are other virtual fencing companies out there, but according to Bottens, Nofence was the first and most developed.
Using the app, a person defines the boundaries of the virtual fence on a map, and the livestock is turned into the virtual paddock. The collars communicate via GPS, cellular bandwidth and Bluetooth.
Bottens said, “The collar gives the animals audio cues which increase in pitch if they cross the boundary. If the animal does not return to the pasture, it will receive a single electric pulse at the highest pitch of the audio cue. They don’t associate the shock correction with a physical location. It’s purely to that song that it plays. So if they don’t hear the song, they keep moving forward. They hear the song, they turn. It’s pretty slick.”
To train cows to the system, Bottens lets them wear the collars for a day to get used to them. They look a bit like a space age cowbell, equipped with a small solar cell which keeps the battery charged. (Bottens hasn’t had any issues with keeping them charged despite his cloudy Illinois winters). On days two and three, he creates a two-acre paddock and programs one line of virtual fencing that excludes about a half-acre of the paddock.
By day four, he’s added a second line of virtual fence, and then three lines on day five. In less than a week, the paddock is completely virtual. Bottens still maintains and uses his single strand of perimeter fence to prevent wildlife and people from entering the virtual fencing system.
Instead of miles of fencing, imagine cows with collars.
Nofence collars come in two sizes, for sheep and for cattle. Currently, a sheep collar costs $200 and a cow collar $300. There is a $3 to $4.50 per head per month cost for the data services. That fee is dependent on how many collars are in use (with a discount applied for 50 collars or more).
According to Bottens, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) may provide funding to help defray the cost of the investment. He encourages livestock producers to talk to their local NRCS office about incorporating virtual fencing into a prescribed grazing management plan (practice standard 528).
Bottens calculates that if the collars last five years, he’ll have invested about 26 cents/day/head, and that is with no EQIP funding. “The way I look at that is that my labor and fencing that I’m spending on my herd today essentially pays for these units. So then, I’m taking that time that we freed up, and we’re doing much better management,” he said.
The advantages of virtual fencing are vast, according to Bottens. He can fence off ponds, timber and gullies in seconds. He can exclude thin areas of a paddock. There is no need to connect to a perimeter fence for power. Paddocks can be shaped irregularly and any size. And the system allows for multiple moves per day.
Another advantage of virtual fencing is that it can work for any type of grazier. For producers looking to get into grazing, it’s easier to get started than ever before. For the set stock grazier, it opens up the possibility of daily moves and thus an opportunity to increase stocking rates. If a grazier is already using rotational grazing, they can easily subdivide paddocks allowing more recovery time between moves. And for the grazier that’s already making multiple moves per day, they can make further changes to increase dry matter intake.
Bottens believes virtual fencing is only the beginning of the grazing technological revolution. He anticipates that by placing wearable sensors on livestock – think Fitbit for cattle – a wealth of data can be communicated to the app. For example, a tail sensor can convey information that a cow is close to calving.
He also imagines a robotic sled that can drag the water tub and mineral feeder through a paddock, which with virtual fencing must still be moved by hand. Additionally, satellite images taking daily images of pasture stands will assess the quality and quantity of the forage.
“Here’s the hope,” Bottens said. “Feedlots exist today because it’s the most economical way to produce meat. But what if we can use technology to make grazing competitive with feedlots? If we can provide the technology that provides an economic benefit, that’s how we can change how farming is done.”
by Sonja Heyck-Merlin
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