I'm someone that has actually worked with cows.<p>Fences work, really really well. And cows are quite easy animals to herd. They have a natural tendency to just follow along with the group. You can literally move hundreds of head of cattle with about 4 people (I've done it).<p>There is some value in collecting biometrics and location information. But the entire "move the cow with a vibrator" thing isn't an innovation I think any rancher really wants or needs.<p>I just have a hard time seeing this as being something that actually solves a need. The "20% savings" seems really fishy. The majority of the labor for a herd is feeding them.
My brothers a dairy farmer in NZ and uses this.<p>Nz farmers will milk twice a day, early morning and afternoon. In the middle of the day the cows return to their paddock from the morning. In the evening they’re moved to a new paddock.<p>Grass consumption is the aim of the game. If you let cows out on a full paddock for the day they’ll partially graze and then starve themselves (relatively speaking) in the afternoon.<p>This is bad for milk production and also pasture quality for the next rotation.<p>The solution to this is to set a break, a temporary electric fence in the middle of the paddock. So, they arrive to half a paddock then in the morning the farm worker takes it down for the afternoon and sets it up in the next paddock for the night. Probably takes 30-45 minutes depending on paddock size, weather and enthusiasm of the farm hand.<p>x2 for 2 herds, 7 days a week for 8 months a year.<p>Now, my brother just draws a line on a map and it takes care of itself.
Once you get them together, sure, but it appears from TFA that this is about gathering them from mountain meadows or other far flung environs. A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site.
These are operations that don’t use fences. The article mentions this is a NZ company, but the American West would have a similar issue where ranchers can run cattle on land leased from BLM. I would imagine Australia would have a similar problem to solve.
It's called a herd for a reason. Usually if you've found one cow you've found them all. In the wild any cow with genes for aloofness quickly got culled by predators.<p>The exceptions are the lame & sick ones, but no fancy gadget is going to bring them in; you've got to take a truck to them.
The herd does fracture and split up. Cows aren't usually alone but they will split into smaller groups.<p>That said, when they see the whole group moving they want to join in.<p>On bigger open ranges you do have to count and go explore to find the two rebels that decided they wanted to be on the other side of the mountain :)
We put our cows out to pasture in the mountains in the spring/summer.<p>Without the fancy tech it takes about a day to gather them all up.<p>But you have to realize, this is a job we do once a year. Gathering the cows from the winter pasture is easy because it's a lot smaller.<p>This is why I said the location information could be useful. But, we used horses and anywhere the cows can go a horse can go.<p>> These are operations that don’t use fences.<p>Nope, ranchers own (or lease) the land they put their cows out to pasture on. It's all fenced.<p>> but the American West would have a similar issue where ranchers can run cattle on land leased from BLM.<p>I'm in the american west. And BLM land that is used for grazing is fenced. In fact, that's part of what you are paying for when you buy a lease from the BLM is to maintain the fence.
I'm also rural.<p>Livestock theft, agricultural gear theft, is a real thing in AU/NZ as I suspect it is where you work.<p>One advantage (but is it economic?) to GPS collars on animals is tracking and warnings should they all suddenly accelerate to road transport speeds.<p>There's potential for heartbeat monitoring to warn of fallen / removed collars or predator takedowns.<p>> this is a job we do once a year.<p>And these collars are principally targeted to dairy operations that move herds about on a daily basis.<p>> I'm in the american west. And BLM land that is used for grazing is fenced.<p>I'm from the Kimberley .. what's a fence?<p>* <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5EQ1NZN6A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5EQ1NZN6A</a>
> Livestock theft, agricultural gear theft, is a real thing in AU/NZ as I suspect it is where you work.<p>I mean, I don't want to jinx it, but it's not really been an issue for us. The main theft we've had to deal with is feed theft and that was solved by switching from 50lbs bales to 1 ton bales.<p>> And these collars are principally targeted to dairy operations that move herds about on a daily basis.<p>Yeah, makes sense why it'd doesn't make sense to us. We didn't raise dairy cattle.<p>We did have a couple of dairy cows, but that was more for my family and a few members of the community. Not for any sort of actual real production. I could see how it'd be a time saver in that case as you do have to twice daily gather the cows to get milked.
Heh - nobody want to jinx anything.<p>On an IT aside, the challenge facing yard, barn, and road security cameras in Australia is parrots .. flocks of several thousand intelligent airborne can openers that follow grain rail lines and rivers and love nothing more than tearing wiring apart.<p>You have to build to extreme anti vandal standards.<p>Changing bale sizes works well to deter casual thieves .. serious shitheads turn up with their own trucks and lifting gear.
> A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site [sic].<p>Are you.. mansplaining how <i>herds</i> work to a <i>cow farmer</i>, because you've read an article on HN?
Fences need to be maintained and are not always where you want them. Cows are big, mostly they are gentle but they can accidentally kill you without trying. Pasture rotation is a big thing but that increases labor costs.<p>Some ranchers love these because they enable things they should do but won't.
Why do you think that, per the article, one million cattle are wearing these collars?
I'd have guessed the biometrics and location information was the most useful part.<p>But as others have pointed out these are primarily for dairy cows, which is pretty different from raising beef cattle (which is what I did).<p>There is a need to twice daily gather the cows to have them milked. And the pasture rotation is much more of an involved process than what we needed to deal with. We just plopped a gaint bale of hay down for the cows to munch on.
I think the advantage is being able to move the cows on a daily basis. If I had to guess, the 20% savings comes from rotation grazing. Rotation grazing is a lot easier on your pasture, allowing you to have more cows per acre. Rotation grazing can easily be done manually -- it doesn't take much training before moving cows between paddocks is as easy as opening the gate between the two paddocks and yelling out "I've put your tasty bribe in the next paddock, come and get it". Well that's not what you yell at them, but that's what they hear.<p>But just because it's easy if you do it daily it quickly adds up to a lot of hours.<p>And the small paddocks of rotation grazing take a lot of expensive wire.
these big names at the top (thiel, musk, etc) ive really just started to tune them out. they're all bored, have too much money, and obsessed with futurism at all costs. they're p much entirely decoupled from the economic plights you and i face, they just play a different game altogether and any potential gamble for savings is never framed as a "this can make things better for everyone" but more or less just funneled through ... uh, i dont know shareholder opportunity or something.<p>i don't doubt there's plenty of upside in agriculture/farming to be had with technology, i just no longer find it meaningful when people from this social class are trying talking about them. something is really off putting now when silicon valley types try to be authority figures on completely different industries, it's super presumptuous. think they've lost the plot quite a bit here, i dont think anyone should be interested in their ideas of the future at all. they've done enough damage. all these dudes ever needed was to go to therapy, all we need now is for them to leave us alone. the incessant need to be the guy with the big ideas these guys are constantly displaying is just so exhausting at this point. wish they'd just go buy a beach and drink liquor out of coconuts and disappear, no one needs to move fast and break things and shake cows
Yeah, any time something farming related comes up here there's a bunch of comments from tech bros who clearly think farmers are just idiots waiting around to be rescued by the tech bros' superior understanding of what farming is and what technology it needs, based on...
Possibly you're just not cynical enough to appreciate the need it could solve. Get it working on cows then move on to people. This <i>is</i> Peter Thiel we're talking about.