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Fencing has just gone high tech. Instead of posts, post hole diggers, wire and staples, all a rancher needs now is a laptop computer and a collar for his cattle. Dr. Dean M. Anderson, a research animal scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jornada Experimental Range, is creating virtual fences. A rancher will some day be able to sit at his kitchen table and, using a lap top computer, draw an area on a map around one of his pastures where he wants his cattle to graze on a given day. Collars or ear tags on the animals will tell the computer program where the animals are and the computer using electric shocks or sound will herd them away from the boundaries, or virtual fence, that the rancher has drawn. Virtual fencing, Anderson said, is an autonomous method to control not only the location, but the direction of movement of animals using virtual boundaries and bilateral cues. "We haven't created anything out of nothing," Anderson said. "For those who train hunting dogs with electronic shock collars, you're already half through the story. For those who are familiar with the Global Positioning System (GPS), you're through the other 50 percent. We simply combined a couple of existing technologies to create something that I think deserves a little consideration and will possibly offer some opportunities." It's still a system that is being developed. It will be a while before it is marketed commercially. As with most research, money is in short supply. Anderson is attempting to raise another $80,000 to manufacture another 29 units so he can broaden his studies. The first cost nearly $100,000. "There are two major companies in the world that have looked at GPS in terms of locating where the animals are," Anderson said. "Those units are about $7,000 right now." The final cost of a commercial virtual fence system should be considerably less. Anderson said he doesn't think the costs of a virtual fencing system will get down to single digits, but he does think it will be below $100 per animal unit. The stimulus, either audio or shock, may be applied through an ear tag similar to ones used in the Allflex electronic identification system. "You then get the ID along with this individual control," Anderson said. "If that isn't individual animal management, I don't know what is." "You can program this fence to move," he said. "If you want to work your cattle at the corral, you can sit there at your kitchen table, programming that virtual fence to start moving. Two and a half hours later or a day later, you've got the cows at the corral. You're not limited by the geometry that conventional technologies have limited us to." He recommends conventional fencing for delineating properties, but there are places and situations such as grazing strategies that the virtual fence would provide a practical solution to existing problems. |
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