The $280 Collar That Doubled a Ranch's Grazing Overnight

About this episode

A rancher outside Kansas City put collars on 30 cows and went from moving them every two days to every four or five days on the same ground, at the same cow condition. That is double the carrying capacity overnight, and we spent most of this episode on how virtual fencing works and what it costs. The collar runs $280 plus a subscription. Users report getting back 8 to 10 hours a week. The GPS is accurate to about 4 or 5 feet, which is roughly one fat cow in any direction. One challenger cow averaged 800 sound warnings a day for three weeks, about one every 30 seconds she was awake, while other cows in the same group got one a week. When a cow does get out, she is back inside 80 percent of the time within 5 to 10 minutes, because her friends are still there. There are around 6,000 of these collars in North America and they only started selling here in June. Then we put the skeptic hat on. What happens to your herd if the company runs out of money. Who owns the data. Why he tells customers to never trust a virtual fence alone along a highway, because the liability is too big. And what happens to cattlemen when Silicon Valley decides cattle are a robotics problem. Also in this one: