Fence of the future

Jack Keating grew up near Atkinson in north central Nebraska. As the youngest of three brothers, he often got the least desirable jobs.

“I got tired of running fence and fixing post holes,” Keating said.

Fast forward to today, Keating is the founder of a company that’s allowing ranchers to contain their cattle and move from pasture to pasture without an actual fence. Corral Technologies offers virtual fencing that uses GPS to set boundaries. Cattle wear collars that beep and emit a shock if the animal attempts to cross the boundary.

“Being able to do any grazing system you want to is now feasible, even if you have other jobs, which many ranchers do,” Keating said.

With fence lines drawn virtually on a software program, ranchers can divide their pastures and change boundaries without the physical work out on the land. It’s a system that fits with rotational grazing methods where cattle graze smaller paddocks and move often in an effort to build soil nutrients and stimulate grass growth. Healthier pastures can support more cattle.

“The big benefit is increasing number of cows per acre,” Keating said.

Adjusting pasture sizes and increasing stocking densities encourages cattle to graze areas they might typically avoid, such as a back corner or a high hill they might have to work to get to.

“Typically you get a more uniform use across the pasture,” said Mitch Stephenson, range management specialist and associate director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Panhandle Research, Extension and Education Center in Scottsbluff.

Over the last year, he’s been working with university researchers to test virtual fencing systems on about 50 head at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory. They’re evaluating how virtual fence can help manage grazing in ways that better utilize the grass resources they have, Stephenson said.

They’ve found that the technology works, he said, and he sees a future for it, but rangeland management skills are still important.

“It’s never going to take the place of a skilled herdsman that knows how to graze his rangelands,” Stephenson said.

He encourages any ranchers considering a virtual fencing system to consider the cost of material and labor of standard barbed wire fence. There’s the cost to maintain the fence and the work it would take if the fence needs to be moved.

As with any new technology, setting up a virtual fencing system comes with a big price tag. Some companies offer a package that includes collars, a base tower, signal boosters and software, according to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Beef Watch article. Some come with subscription fees, maintenance and installation charges.

It’s been reported by South Dakota Public Broadcasting and others that another virtual fencing company, Vence, charges about $10,000 for the base station that operates the GPS system and leases each collar for about $35 per year. Vence, a California company, is being acquired by Merck Animal Health.

The virtual system does more than replace the posts and wires of an actual fence. The collars that cattle wear can also monitor cattle health. Keating and the Corral team are working to collect more health analytics – determining if a cow is in heat at breeding time, for instance, or spotting a sick calf.

With GPS abilities, ranchers can collect data on where cattle are congregating and make management decisions to encourage them to use the whole pasture.

“We’re making sure we’re getting the best data for them,” Keating said.

Stephenson compared it to the insights farmers gain on their fields from precision farming technologies.

“As more companies come on board there’s really some phenomenal science and technology behind these unites and what they’re going to be able to provide,” he said.

Monitoring cattle health is one benefit. Ranchers can also apply precision management techniques to their pastures. Overtime, it can encourage the growth of more forage.

Fencing off areas to allow the grass to rest and recover helps enhance some soil health metrics, Stephenson said.

Not overgrazing, instead leaving residual forage, can help build the soil’s capacity to hold more water, according to South Dakota State University Extension, which put out a series of articles on five range management principles this fall. Better management can help pastures stand up to drought.

“We can get more days out of pasture,” Keating said, adding that the more time cattle spend grazing translates to not having to buy so much expensive hay to feed through the winter months.

Keating’s family run 150 head on their home place in Holt County, Nebraska. He remembers when he was younger listening to his dad ponder why they had invisible fences for dogs but not for cattle. It’s a question that stuck with the young rancher, but he said he wasn’t about to start digging ditches to burry an invisible fence line like the system for pets requires.

His schooling at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln helped build his technical background to explore virtual fencing solutions. He started developing Corral before he graduated in 2020 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Starting with dog collars to prove out some of his questions, his project went from just a device to a system that keeps cows in a fence. That changed when Corral was accepted into The Combine incubator program for Nebraska businesses.

“That’s where the actual business took off,” he said. “We started building a business instead of building 3D models.”

In April 2021, Corral was the grand prize winner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Business Pitch Event. Competing with more than 50 other teams, Corral took the top prize of $25,000. That award lead to a Nebraska Innovation Fund Prototype Grant from the state Department of Economic Development.

This past summer Corral worked with three ranchers across Nebraska to test the system in different environment and with different ages of cows. It helped spur some major improvements to the collars the cattle wear.

Cattle can be pretty rough with their neckwear, and they’re exposed to the elements. Like with any wearable technology put on animal, from collars to ear tags, sometimes they break, fall off or short out, Stephenson said of their experience on the Gudmundsen Ranch.

Corral’s collars are designed to adjust to the size of the animal’s neck and have a counterweight to keep them from flipping over. They’re fitting with solar panels that keep the battery power charged. It’s designed to last two years, ideally.

“Our goal is to reduce the amount of time spent in a chute messing around with this,” Keating said.

The collars could be put on at calving or preg checking, he said, and “you’ll be able to not touch that device for two years.”

The collars emit a sound when the animal gets close to a virtual fence boundary. If they get closer, it will give off more sound, and if they get closer to the line still, it will give a shock.

“Once they’re trained, they will respond to sound most of the time,” Keating said.

Cattle at the Gudmundsen Ranch learned rather quickly to associate that sound with a shock and stop at the barrier before a shock is emitted, Stephenson said. And when fence boundaries change, it doesn’t take much time for the animals to learn they can move past that barrier, he said.

Corral collars are designed to give stimulation from the left and right sides, making it possible to steer the cattle to where they should be.

Keating will be working through the winter to test the latest version of Corral collars. He plans to roll out 2,000 devices to ranchers in key states next spring.

To inquire about the project, Keating said ranchers should visit his website, corraltech.com, where they can enter their contact information on the “waitlist” page. Keating said he will call them personally to talk about pre-ordering.