Innovations in Cattle Herding
Traditional herding methods can be very-labor intensive and time consuming. Cattle graze over large paddocks (a fenced area, usually near a stable, chiefly used for cattle grazing); in a typical farm containing several paddocks, cattle are rotated frequently between these fields to prevent over-grazing in any one particular area. Farm herders spend a significant amount of time to move cattle over long distances and oftentimes through inclement weather.
A GPS based invisible fence can be used to virtually herd cattle through the automatic and gradual shifting of the containment borders. Cattle react to their environment by being attracted to, or repelled from different features of their environment. Cattle can be repelled from geographic features such traditional fences, rivers, rocks etc. and are attracted to other cattle for protection and to fulfill their innate desire to gather. Virtual cattle herders use various sounds that are transmitted to a RF receiving device located on a collar that emits sounds that may occur in nature such as a roaring tiger, a barking dog or a hissing snake, to move cows in a desired direction. Electric stimulation is only applied if movement in the desired direction has not been detected by a GPS location processor. The least amount of force needed to get an animal to change its location usually occurs when the collared animal is already in movement and not at rest; thereby making audible and/or electric stimuli to moving animals most efficient and the least stressful.
In 2004, researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences successfully trained cattle to approach a feed source in response to auditory signals. To help improve cow traffic in automated milking systems, these heifers would approach a feeder in response to a audible stimuli being emitted from a collar.
Read more about this topic: Invisible Fence
Famous quotes containing the words innovations and/or cattle:
“Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A man shall perhaps rush by and trample down plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut many tons of them, littered his stables with them, and fed them to his cattle for years. Yet, if he ever favorably attends to them, he may be overcome by their beauty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)