“It’s not a complete silver bullet, but nothing is,” says Jay Smith of the J Lazy S Angus Ranch of Carmen. He and his wife, Chyenne, are using virtual fencing to manage cattle grazing on their Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service (USFS) permits after the 130,000-acre Moose Fire scorched their USFS grazing allotment in 2022. “I think the proof’s in the pudding when I say we want to keep using it,” he says. “The cost and the work were worth it.”
Forage after fire on the Salmon-Challis National Forest
The Smiths and their four fellow permittees faced heavy animal unit month (AUM) reductions for multiple years while the entire Diamond-Moose allotment recovered from the wildfire. “Our allotment was surrounded by the fire map,” says Chyenne. “There were big chunks the fire didn’t burn because of how the mountain is, but it burned all around and both ends.”
While other allotments were impacted, says Salmon-Challis National Forest Range and Invasives Lead Tina Ruffing, “The Diamond-Moose allotment was most impacted at 49,519 acres, or approximately 66 percent burned.” Twelve percent of the allotment burned at high, 25% at moderate and 29% at light severity.
But in the unburned portion, says Jay, were some of the best acres, mountain meadows with a lot of grass the J Lazy S operation depends on. The Smiths discussed their options with the other permittees and the University of Idaho (U of I), then approached USFS with a plan to use that grass that would avoid physical fencing and the associated cost, labor and paperwork.
“The [Salmon-Challis] Forest wanted to provide grazing opportunity for the permittees but was also committed to protecting watershed values and allowing vegetative recovery after the burn,” says Ruffing. “Understandably, permittees were concerned about how much their grazing would be reduced and for how long. U of I folks were interested in testing, among other things, the effectiveness of virtual fence in steep terrain at a landscape scale.”
BLM and ISDA staff assemble GPS collars to place on cattle. Photo courtesy of BLM.
Logistics
Virtual fencing systems use two components. The collars fitted to each cow are leased annually. “It’s an emerging technology – you don’t want to own it,” says Jay. Leasing allows the producer to take advantage of frequent updates and improvement – and to avoid having to replace batteries each year. At $50 per head annually, he says, “We created enough efficiencies and cost savings to make that part pay.”
Users purchase the other component, base stations, which have lives of at least 10 years. At about $10,000 each, these may be the deciding factor for or against virtual fencing on an operation. The Smiths, working with U of I and ISDA, used grant money to purchase the five needed to cover the perimeter on their rugged allotment and to mount the stations on trailers.
Once equipment is in hand, the producer must place the base stations, collar each cow and set the grazing areas, or polygons. “It’s not a protocol for someone who doesn’t like planning ahead,” says Jay. After collaring cows, the Smiths spent four days training them to respond to the beeps and shocks before turning them onto their BLM and USFS permits in 2023.
Outcomes and lessons
Overall containment of J Lazy S cattle was well over 90% on the BLM allotment and dropped into the 80s once on the rugged forest ground, says Jay. Working with U of I, permittees were alerted to escapees – and given their coordinates – so they could quickly move them back into designated areas. In some instances, say the Smiths, they were even able to place temporary virtual fences to keep strays from wandering farther.
One headache occurred when uncollared cattle found their way onto the allotment. Collared cattle tended to break out more frequently when strays were around or when cattle were under pressure, as from vehicles or predators. Setting polygons too small also contributed to breakouts. “University of Idaho has indicated that 15 to 20 acres seems to be as small an area that can be effectively managed,” says Ruffing.
Even with setbacks, she says, “Monitoring indicates that we have met recovery objectives in the lower-severity burned areas, so the allotment is stocked at full numbers for the full season [in 2024]. We are still working to exclude cattle from the higher-severity areas – recovery is going to take more time there.”
A BLM permittee collars a cow before turnout. Photo courtesy of BLM.
Protecting resources with Shoshone BLM
To the west, the BLM Shoshone Field Office explored virtual fencing as a way to protect sensitive riparian areas. “It is probably one of our roughest, remotest, most difficult allotments to manage based on topography alone,” says Field Manager Codie Martin of the location. “Fencing would have been cost-prohibitive and maybe not possible in places.”
The BLM project launched in 2022 with 375 collared cows. Besides pasture fences, these were programmed with two exclosures of about 5 acres each, which contained spring sources and riparian areas. Because the allotment contained important sage grouse habitat and big game migration corridors, the National Fish and Wildlife Federation granted money to defray costs.
“It worked really good initially – then the collars started falling off,” says Martin. They ended up losing about half the collars in 2022, due to failure of a small bolt at the top of each unit. First-year results reflected those missing collars. Then, supply shortages prevented BLM from obtaining collars at all in 2023.
However, the company addressed the problems and Martin says, “This year, we’ve had hardly any issues – they’ve gotten a lot better.” What’s more, he adds, “the monitoring out there is showing good results.”
Based on this experience, Martin says he would be willing to try virtual fencing in other areas, given the right circumstances and a willing permittee. “It’s one tool in the toolbox,” he adds. “I wouldn’t propose you go rip out every fence we have.”
Lower-tech, smaller check
If producers are intrigued by the idea of virtual fencing but put off by the price tag, another option may be a few years out. A team of students and professors at U of I and Washington State University (WSU) are working on an eartag model.
“We are the only ones working on radio waves, not GPS,” says Dr. Karen Launchbaugh, professor of rangeland ecology at U of I. “It’s old technology, simple technology, and it’s reliable.”
Cattle containment using virtual fencing was more than 80% even on the steep, rough terrain of the Diamond-Moose allotment of the Salmon-Challis National Forest. Photo courtesy of USFS.
It also requires a smaller battery. “It requires hundreds of times less energy than a GPS system,” says Launchbaugh. While the Vence collars used on the BLM and USFS projects weighed in at about 2.5 pounds each, a radio-wave prototype is light enough to suspend via an eartag, at about 2.6 ounces.
The system’s position in the ear, which is twice as sensitive as the neck, also lends itself to lighter shocks and quieter beeps. This also contributes to a lower energy requirement and battery weight.
So far, the U of I/WSU team has tried the tags on cows and yearlings in a feedlot scenario at the UI Beef Center. “We can keep animals out of haybales or in pens without gates,” says Launchbaugh. As with the collars, four days were enough to train cattle to respect the virtual boundary.
In collaboration with four producers, Launchbaugh is hoping to take the tags to the range by next spring, if not sooner. “We can put out a bale or a bucket of feed and make them avoid these items,” she says. “This exclusion zone idea could keep animals out of seeps, springs or antiquity sites.”
She sees grazing cover crops or crop residue as another obvious application. A coffee can-sized beacon mounted atop a pivot would easily cover the entire field to provide a temporary perimeter “fence.” Researchers are still experimenting with various types of radios, but Launchbaugh is confident the range on the final product will be at least a half mile.
Unlike GPS collars, which store the boundary even when they’re out of reception, the eartags need to be in range of the beacon to work. The system will eventually provide producers with the ability to track cows’ positions or alter the boundaries remotely.
The Smiths fitted each of their five base stations onto trailers to improve ease of placement on their rugged allotment. Photo provided by Jay Smith.
“We’re lower-tech, but it will be a hugely lower cost,” says Launchbaugh. The team estimates base units will cost a couple hundred dollars, and they are aiming for $25 per eartag. “We want to make this easy to get in the hands of producers,” she says.
Thinking like a cow
While promising thus far, Launchbaugh believes the virtual fence systems will be more effective if paired with visual cues. “If you hear a siren, what do you do? You look around,” she says. Providing visual barriers – she suggests occasional step-in posts or surveying flags – would help animals know where the boundary is without having to test it.
And Launchbaugh wants producers not to think of the system as a fence. “It’s more of an electric stockdog,” she says. “I don’t think it will ever replace a border fence.”
Either version of this technology requires understanding the animals in question. “You cannot stop a thirsty cow on a downhill run,” says Jay Smith. “You have to be strategic about where you put fences.”
“You have to think about how to use the land,” says Launchbaugh. “You have to think about the range like a cow does.”
