Does Virtual Fencing Work for Grazing Dairy Cattle?

Abstract

Pasture management in Australia’s dairy industry requires the manual shifiting of temporary electric fences to maintain pasture quality and growth. Virtual fencing presents an alternative to save time and labour costs. We used automated virtual fence (VF) collars to determine the variation in learning of the virtual fence stimuli, and evaluated the success of the technology to contain cows in a predetermined area of pasture. Twelve Holstein-Friesian non-lactating multiparous dairy cows were fitted with the collars, and a VF was used to restrict cows to two grazing allocations (G1 and G2) across six days. Cows received an audio tone (AT) when they approached the virtual fence, and a paired electrical pulse (EP) if they continued forward. The VF contained cows within predetermined areas for 99% of time, but cows spent the least time near the fence (p < 0.01). The number of stimuli reduced through time, demonstrating the ability of cows to learn the VF (p = 0.01). However, the mean number of EP per day ranged from 1 to 6.5 between individuals (p < 0.01). Therefore, successful containment may have a welfare cost for some individuals. Further work should focus on this individual variation, including measures of welfare.

Pre-Exposure to an Electrical Stimulus Primes Associative Pairing of Audio and Electrical Stimuli for Dairy Heifers in a Virtual Fencing Feed Attractant Trial

“…While individual testing increases scientific understanding of the factors that may affect the adoption of virtual fencing technology, it does not provide an applied understanding of the overall effectiveness of the technology. Recent research has shown that groups of 12 dry dairy cattle being grazed at low stocking densities using virtual fencing technology remain in the inclusion zone 99% of the time [14]. As discussed by Campbell et al [3], cattle are gregarious species and their behaviour when tested individually may not relate to their behaviour in a herd.…”

“…The ethical acceptability of virtual fencing technology relies on the ability of all animals to learn the association between audio and electrical stimuli and through this gain a level of predictability and controllability over their environment [1]. Virtual fencing could enable the implementation of increasingly intense and complex grazing regimes in pastoral dairy systems [13,14], and with increased complexity comes a potential risk of some animals not learning to avoid the electrical stimulus [1]. Long-term studies with larger group sizes are needed to determine if all animals are able to learn the association between the audio and electrical stimulus.…”

“…The application of virtual fencing has been well demonstrated on beef breed cattle in extensive grazing systems [3,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12], and may enable the implementation of intense and complex grazing regimes in pastoral dairy systems [13,14]. There is considerable variation between individual beef heifers [6,10] and dairy cows [14] in associative learning of audio and electrical stimuli. This variation may be associated with the specific environment and events than an individual has experienced, particularly during the developmental period [15].…”

Should Dairy Cattle Be Trained to a Virtual Fence System as Individuals or in Groups?

“…Virtual fencing systems rely on operant conditioning, positive punishment associative learning between a conditioned stimulus (an audio tone, AT) and unconditioned stimulus (an electrical pulse, EP) [ 5 ] administered to an animal via neck-mounted devices [ 6 , 7 ]. Positive punishment associative learning training method utilises a negative/aversive stimulus to alter an animals behaviour to avoid receiving the stimuli [ 8 ].…”

Sky-Farmers: Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in Agriculture

“…Though some arguments have been raised with respect to the effectiveness of geo-fencing, such as in the work of [47], rather than purely depending on stimuli, UAVs can be used to steer the animals back into range when they roam out of grazing perimeters. UAVs can therefore provide a cheap and effective way of getting animals back "inline" and are particularly useful when a number of animals stray outside different ends of the perimeter.…”