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eShepherd Collars, July 4, 2024-present...Johnson Farm
The Fitting Process
Johnson Farm, July 4 2024, Ron Kristjanson fitting the Pairs
74 head
A full day's work! A larger mob might require more time or more workers...
Within 2 weeks
The cows had developed an adequate 'audio response rate' (responding to the harmless audio warning before a shock occurs)
Once adapted to their collar signals
...the cows respond as they would to a fence.
Advantages:
24/7 monitoring; easy editing; reduced labour costs; simple set up...
Virtual paddocks can be scheduled
allowing for multiple automated moves
Mob dwell time can be viewed as a heat map.
Individual cow "tracks" (GPS timestamps) can be viewed over intervals of up to 2 weeks.
Alerts can show if a collar hasn't moved;
or a move has been completed.
Collars can communicate via Lte or LoRa gateway
Pulsed audio pre-warns the cow they are nearing a boundary point...
If the cow passes the Virtual Paddock boundary; they are shocked with a 3.4kV pulse.
If they pass the far side of the boundary, the warnings and shocks terminate.
On reentry of the paddock, there is no audio or shock warning...
Herd instinct shows a cow out of step with its mob will return. Once trained to register the warning audio, mob members don't test the boundary.
Within 2 hrs
The cows had largely adapted to their collars
It saved time to calculate links for average neck size
...and pre-adjust collar accordingly
In the field...
"Virtual Paddocks" (digital fences) are managed by a rotational grazing schedule, designed in the eShepherd web interface