We Tried Virtual Fence on Goats & Sheep (Real Farm Results) (Ep. 360)

"Meg, what do I do? Do I wait or do I buy them today? What would you suggest? Oh, that's always the million-dollar question, and I've been struggling with that with my cattle. I mean, with the sheep and goats, to me it was a no-brainer. I wasn't gonna be able to have sheep and goats any other way. It wasn't gonna be feasible to me. But with the cattle, if you can make a meaningful increase in your land utilization by using these collars, I would definitely go ahead and do it, especially right now with the cattle market being so high. You probably have the most leverage now to pay for these collars than cattle producers have had in a long time. So if you're gonna be able to go from, say, once a week moves to daily moves, or once a month moves to, like, weekly or daily moves, I mean, that is definitely gonna pay for itself just in increased forage utilization and in carrying capacity."

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. Okay, we're still on virtual fences because it's kind of my little rabbit hole at the moment. So we are talking to Meg Greski, another client of mine that works for the Oklahoma Conservation District, and she does some regen consulting.

So through that she is familiar with the virtual fencing, the different kind of companies, the costs, all that kind of stuff. And so I thought, let's just talk to another person doing it, and the fun part about Meg is that she has been using it on her sheep and her goats. So the last person we talked to obviously was using it on his cows, but I have had a lot of people asking about sheep just online, how it works, if they stay in, all that good stuff. So thanks, Meg, for being here.

I'm extremely excited to be here 'cause I am, like, your biggest fan girl.

You are. You — I will admit you are one of them. And I appreciate you. So what have you seen… Like, I have a whole list of questions kinda in an order, and I'd like to not stay specifically in that order, but a hair. As far as, like, for your own operation, the sheep and the goats — do you have it… You don't have it on your cattle?

I do not have it on cattle yet, but I really hope to be doing that very soon here.

What was your cost for the sheep and the goats?

So I collared, like, a test group of about 10 goats last year, and it worked really great. So this year I have 20 goats, and I also have 10 sheep that I added as well. So I have two different ranches, and I have goats on one and sheep on the other. The collars are now costing from Nofence about between $240 and $270 to purchase one sheep and goat collar. But you purchase that upfront, and then you own that collar. So there's no annual, like, fee as far as collars go.

There is an annual fee for the software subscription, but that's not a whole lot. It's like three or four dollars per collar per month, and your collar purchase with Nofence comes with your first year of subscription free. You buy the collar the first year, and then starting in the second year, starting 12 months later, you just get charged a couple dollars per collar per month on an ongoing basis.

There is one called Halter that just does an annual subscription to their program pretty much, where it's about $100 per cow per year, and you get charged that every year. But you don't own the collars, and so every time they get a new collar version, then you automatically get the new collars. So it comes with automatic hardware replacements.

'Cause you've compared all these for clients. Do you like one over the other?

Yeah, there's definitely some preferences that I have. For sheep and goats right now in the US, Nofence is your only option. But when it comes to cattle collars, there are four or five now. So Halter is probably emerging as the leader in terms of producer preference.

I really like their collar design because it doesn't have like a big pendulum under the animal's neck that flaps around like Gallagher and Nofence do. Those collars are pretty big and bulky and heavy. But Halter's collar, everything is mounted on the back of the animal's neck, and it's a very sleek design, and I think that the animals probably enjoy wearing that a little better.

There's another company called Monil. They are from Norway, I believe. They are just launching, like, this week in the US in select few states. I think it's mostly, like, Nebraska, Oklahoma, like the center of the country. I don't think the Dakotas are in it just yet. I don't think Texas is in it just yet. But I expect that they're gonna expand pretty quickly to most of the big cattle producing states in the US.

And I think they will have a sheep and goat collar available here in the future. But their collar design is similar to Halter, and so they have everything mounted on the back of the neck. Halter just became base station free, so I really like the fact that base stations are no longer needed because that's just an extra cost, extra overhead item, extra thing that can be damaged in severe weather.

What is a base—

So it's like a satellite relay station. So in areas that don't have either good cell service or really any type of connectivity, it relays the messages from your phone to the satellite to the collars.

Hmm.

I believe that the base stations are kind of becoming obsolete pretty quickly here. So Halter was base station dependent up until, like, this week, and they just announced on all their social media that the towers are no longer needed. 'Cause those relay towers were $4,000 or $5,000 apiece.

And so with Halter, that is the one that you're paying $100 a month per collar, but it gets replaced when they upgrade.

Yeah. So that's $100 per cow per year every year, and that encompasses their entire platform. Whereas with the other companies, you buy the collars and then you just pay a little fee for the software every year.

So now that Halter's getting rid of the base station, does everybody need new collars?

I mean, if you're a Halter subscriber and there is any kind of collar changes, you'll be automatically provided with those collars as part of your $100 per cow per year.

That's interesting. I had not heard of the base station stuff before.

Mm-hmm. Yes. That was a major difference between the systems kind of up till now. The first system in the US was called Vence, V-E-N-C-E, and they were base station dependent and I believe they still are. And then we started getting companies like Gallagher's eShepherd and Nofence that could run without the base stations. But you did need cellphone service at least on a mediocre level where your animals are located.

Mm-hmm.

And now I think it's just increasingly being pushed toward the no base station thing because base stations are just such an added cost for producers and it's a barrier to entry. But I really think Halter is gonna be great, especially now that they don't have base stations.

The company I have been looking at very carefully for cattle is called Monil, like I said, from Norway. They are no base station, similar collar design. Nofence works great. I really like it with the sheep and goats, but I just don't like the collar design as much. And Gallagher, they have, like I said, that big pendulum collar like Nofence does.

And what I've been kind of seeing with some clients is that this five-pound weight that hangs under an animal's neck — every time the animals put their heads down to graze that thing bops them in the chin, and cattle are starting to get like swellings or like abscesses or like little bumps under their chins from that. And I'm thinking if you go to the sale barn with those you are going to get discounted.

Is it just a matter of not adjusting the collar correctly that it is bumping, or it doesn't matter how you adjust the collar, you're always gonna get that hitting them?

I think the adjustment definitely does play a role, and like I haven't talked to any company reps about this. I mean, they may be aware of the issue and may have found a way around it, but the client that was having this problem that I worked with also has it on growing heifers. And so unless you wanna be catching those heifers once a month to loosen these collars off, he probably did put 'em on a little bit looser to allow for growth.

The client that I interviewed, Tyson, has not had a problem with that. So that's interesting. I wonder if it wouldn't just be an adjustment issue. So what are the lifespans of the collars? Like, are you seeing that some of them — the lifespan, because that's a big question that I got, and when I asked what to ask, people wanted to know what are the lifespans. And Tyson, again, had no problems with the lifespan of his Nofence. And so have you seen any of that or researched any of that?

Most people in the US, I mean, have not had these virtual fence systems for more than like two or three years now, since they just all got launched.

Tyson's on year four, I think.

Oh, really?

I think Tyson's on year four with his. Yeah. He had a lot of experience 'cause he's in the trial. Like, they picked him for the trial.

Oh, he was a beta tester or something?

But he said he hasn't had — he said that he has not had any issues with his. Like, if they come out with something new, they just send it to him because he's in the trial period. But he hasn't — he's got some of them that are still original, and he hasn't had any issues.

Yeah, I have not had anybody… I think the oldest client that I have that has them has had them for about three years now. Most people are newer than that. But I have not had anybody complain about failure of the actual collar unit, thinking, "Oh man, I gotta replace these already." I'm in the second year with my Nofence collars, and there's none of them that are showing any kind of significant wear. I have not had any neck straps or anything get damaged to where they had to be replaced. At this point, collar lifespan is not an issue I have heard anyone bring up. All of the companies say these things oughta last for between five and 10 years. So that's what I'm kind of expecting.

And in terms of batteries, um, I know that Nofence had some battery issues maybe in the past, but since I've been with them, I haven't had any. I think that they've pretty much fixed it now. There's only one company that does not have solar panels on their collars, and that's Vence. Vence, you need to buy new batteries because they're also not rechargeable, so I feel their technology is so far behind, that company.

But with all the other companies — Nofence has removable, rechargeable batteries if the solar panels don't keep up, but my solar panels have. I have not had to pull sheep and goat batteries and recharge them at all. I have had to swap out the batteries on my guard dogs because the guard dogs lay in the shade all day. Whereas the sheep and goats are standing out in the sun. Guard dogs will show up on the regular site.

Well, that's actually kind of interesting.

Yeah. So every couple months I have to change my guard dog batteries, but all the sheep and goat batteries have stayed full for the entire year. I have not worried about it. Like Halter, I don't think they even have changeable batteries or anything. Their collars just have an integrated battery with the solar panel, and I think if you ever have a problem with battery life on their collars, they'll just give you a different collar because that's kind of their model.

So how are you… There's so many questions about the sheep specifically. How are you keeping them in? How do they get… I mean, obviously there's a tone, but what happens if they cross? Like, their wool is so thick that how do you get — how are you getting the message through?

I can't speak to wool sheep specifically very much. I mean, I run hair sheep. But I do have some that, they're just like backyard sheep I bought from somebody. So there are some that I think are not genetically pure hair sheep, and they do have a lot of wool on their necks, and those ones did take longer to train.

So out of my sheep, I could kind of see two different groups emerging. Like, the first group kind of trained within the first couple days. The second group took a few weeks to really get it, and I think it was because of the heavier amounts of wool on their necks. Where I think if you have really wooly sheep or sheep with a lot of stuff on their necks, you may want to shave that when you put the collars on. Or if you have wool sheep, you probably wanna collar them right after shearing.

Hair sheep I really don't think are very problematic. My goats have been great, 'cause goats just have hair. Goats trained really fast. The sheep did not train as fast as the goats, but it also could have a lot to do with just which individual animals I have. Grazing behavior is different based on — like, not just because of breed, but because of the animal's life experiences and how they were raised and what they're used to. I'm thinking it's going to vary by whether you have a sheep that is hair or wool, how these sheep were raised, and maybe just down to the individual animal level. 'Cause everybody with virtual fence talks about how there's one or two animals in every herd that just can't figure it out, and you just gotta get rid of those.

Oh, that's interesting. How little are the sheep and the goats when you're putting a collar on?

Nofence says that you shouldn't collar animals that are less than 40 pounds. So basically you gotta get these things to weaning size before they collar. And the cattle companies pretty much say that too, is that you wanna collar calves at weaning when they're at least like maybe 400 pounds. But sheep and goats flock together really well compared to cattle. They're less independently minded, so I've not had any issues with having babies drifting off. Even the animals that don't respond as well to the collars at first, like they don't wanna be separated from their buddies, and so everybody has been staying together. I haven't had any significant problems having sheep and goats anywhere I don't want them.

Interesting. 'Cause goats will just — it seemed like they'll just jump over anything. Are you just grazing your goats? What are you doing with your goats?

So I run cattle and sheep on the one place, and cattle and goats on the other place. And I'm using the virtual collars to keep them in the same paddocks pretty much as the cattle. The cattle are on single hot wire right now, but I'm using the collars for the small ruminants, and so they can always drink off the same water points. I'm not running two separate herds with two separate water points because that just is an exponential labor increase. And I think I might have lost track of what the actual question was there.

That's okay.

Oh, yeah, if I was grazing them or what.

No, you answered it. Are you moving them via your phone then? 'Cause you have two different locations, so you're not always at your location. And how often are you rotating?

I'm not rotating real intensively right now. I pretty much am just not moving them with my phone, like strip grazing them or anything. I am just setting the boundaries, and then I will either push them or shake a feed bucket and pull them into the new area. The sheep have really bonded with the cattle extremely well. So any time I move the cattle, the sheep come. So the sheep will just kind of follow the cattle.

How long have you had them together?

They bonded within a week probably to each other pretty well. So when I first put them together, they stayed at kind of opposite ends of the pasture from one another, but then they figured out not to be scared of each other, and they integrated.

So are you testing? Is that why you have one goats and one sheep, is you're testing who's better?

No, I have it that way because of the forage bases on the two different ranches. So where I have the goats, it's a lot more rough country. We got a lot more brush. It's like a native grass situation. And where the sheep are, it's flat and square, and it's all introduced forages.

But the reason I got the sheep there is because the landowner that I rent from was complaining about weeds. Now, you know, I don't have a problem with what most people call weeds, because they are forbs, they're biodiversity, and they are there breaking up some legacy compaction. But the landowner doesn't wanna look at a huge bunch of weeds. So I'm like, "Well, don't spray." He was threatening to spray. I'm like, "Don't do that. Let's turn the weeds into money instead of spending money." So that's why I got the sheep there. The sheep are generally known as forb eaters, and goats are more brush eaters. In the future I may run sheep, goats, and cattle together.

While you're looking at all these different collars, is there one that is easier to use technology-wise than others, or are they all kind of the same?

I haven't played around with everybody's app, but I also have not heard from any of my producers that anything is really hard to work with or anything's hard to figure out. Nofence, I know it's just really easy. Like, I never watched any of their tutorials or anything. I just went on the app. They have a couple little bubbles that pop up, like the first time you log in, "Here's how this works. Here's how that works." And I was able to just figure it out. Between last year and this year they added a lot of new features and they changed things around a little bit on their app, but I think it's really great.

So some companies will set up maps and everything for you, I think especially when there's a base station involved. Like, you send them your maps and they will program in, like, your perimeter boundaries and stuff. All these companies are really willing to work with ranchers and support them long term. The customer service is really great, 'cause they kind of know that this is such a new technology that if they don't help people through the adoption process, the people are gonna give up, or they're not gonna use it right. They're not gonna get the results they're looking for, and then they're gonna say, "Oh, well, you know, that wasn't worth the money."

How old are your producers that are using it? Do you have anybody that's over 60?

I do have a guy who is retired from the extension system down here, so he's gotta be in his 50s, 60s. Predominantly younger folks, though. And I think that the older crowd is really gonna find this to be… I mean, the older crowd generally has been established for longer. They've got more money. And so they're not gonna be as afraid of the startup cost, and I think that they're really going to love this because of the labor flexibility.

Do you guys have grants down there, too, in order to help pay for the collars? Have you seen any of that?

Yeah, that's a big question I get a lot is, how can our government and non-government, the conservation cost share programs help with this? Really the only feasible opportunity right now in Oklahoma to get help with this is a program that I run called SHIP, S-H-I-P. We just closed applications for that this year. So it usually opens in January of every year. That's just for Oklahoma producers.

NRCS is the federal conservation people, and they are rapidly working toward getting this as one of their practices. Each state, I think, is kind of moving at a different pace with it because each state can kind of make their own decisions. Oklahoma had some really restrictive boundaries around it the last couple years. Like, they basically needed you to have 2,000 contiguous acres before they would even talk to you about it. And most of our producers in Oklahoma, I mean, there could be some pretty big acreages, but they're usually not contiguous. So that excluded pretty much everyone. They have backed off on that now. So I actually have an EQIP application in, and I'm waiting to hear if they're gonna help me pay for cattle collars, which would be great.

There's some private funding and stuff out there, too. There may be stuff through National Grazing Lands or State Grazing Lands Coalitions. I'm not really super familiar with the whole landscape of it, but I also really hope that there's gonna be more opportunities in the future to help producers defray this cost. 'Cause that is definitely just the number-one adoption barrier. For 100 cows, if you're gonna go with a company where you buy the collars upfront, which is everybody but Halter, you're looking at spending $30,000, $40,000.

Which, I mean, that's what a tractor or a pickup costs, so maybe I'm just, like, thinking about it too much. But for an operation like me, I'm relatively small still. I'm a startup, only been doing this for, like, three years in its current iteration. If I have 30, 40 grand to spend, it really needs to go into something that has babies right now.

Mm-hmm.

So the startup cost is a huge deal for people, and I just hope that we're gonna see more cost-share and more financial assistance for producers in the coming years.

My concern about the cost-share, Meg, is my tinfoil hat, and that is that I'm gonna get this cost-share, and then they're gonna track how many cows I have. That all gets reported. Like, that's the one question that I asked Tyson that he couldn't answer. But none of you are gonna be able to answer that. At what point are these companies sold off and then stuff is shared? Like Tyson was talking about Nofence is still the original owners, and some of these other companies have been sold off. And when they're sold off, you don't know what the intent of the buyer is, and are they gonna track, you know, how many cattle I own and all the other government BS that goes along with it.

Yeah, it is a concern among producers too. And that is an objection I hear a lot is like, who owns the data? What happens to the data? Where does the data go?

Yeah, 'cause right now there's just not a lot of tracking of cattle, and then you look at what's happening in Canada and you're like, "Mm, I don't think I wanna participate." You know? Or you start buying collars and — it's kind of like guns. You start selling them privately and they're not being tracked. Well, they're still tracked because you still need to have the cell tower. You know, it's just, to me, it's a tracking thing.

Yeah. Anytime that you use a collar — I mean, I have seen people buy and sell used collars at this point 'cause there's starting to be some of them going around, but each collar has to then be registered on the new person's account. So someone always knows where those collars are.

Yeah. You're not gonna get away from it. So have you seen terrain — like, I've not been to Oklahoma to see your guys' terrain. I guess it's one of the states I need to come down to. But are you seeing like flat terrain mostly, or are people in hills and valleys, and how has the service had an issue with rough terrain?

Well, that's where the base stations come in, is if you get to a certain level of roughness and you can't reliably get communication with the collars, the base station helps with that. And that's being used in like the Rocky Mountains and stuff where there's really severe terrain. In Oklahoma, we really don't have anything that's that bad. We do have some areas of just poor cell phone coverage, just mostly because no one lives there. So base stations may be needed in those places too, but in most of Oklahoma, I really think you can get by without a base station just using satellite or cell communication with these collars. I have not ever had any service communication issues. I have pretty good cell phone service on my ranches.

But the collars also don't need to have great connectivity 24/7. So even if the animals were to go down in a draw or something where the collars can't connect, they've already got their boundary information loaded on that collar, and then every time they kind of come up on top of the hill, they can get an update or a refresh, a reload, and then the collar will change boundaries and stuff. So it's okay if you don't have constant service. The companies also will be able to help you with this. Like, they have service maps, and they can project like if you're gonna need base stations or how many, or if their system is gonna work on your land or not. So they will support you in making that decision.

What's interesting though is the people that are getting rid of the base stations, if that's what's helping you communicate with the collar, that'll be interesting then to see what's happening in the rough terrain or the severe terrain as you called it. Because are we gonna want the collars that continue to have a base station so that when we are in mountains we can still have access to those cattle?

I think that the people — like I haven't actually talked to anyone at Halter about how the whole process is now going to work. I think anybody that does currently have base stations will continue using them. They just are gonna take on new clients now that may not need them. So they're gonna probably at this point with new clients decide, okay, do you need one or not?

Interesting.

Yeah, so anyone who already has them is gonna probably be keeping on using them.

Okay. Are your clients doing — not so much for you, 'cause we've talked about it a little bit — but are you seeing that for your producers, the grazing can be more intense now because they're able to move via their phone versus having to go out and move? So maybe they're moving more, they're grazing more area. Tyson was talking about how he actually has more weight gain on his calves because of how he can adjust the grazing on those. Are you seeing some of that same stuff?

Yeah, I think that the people who are gonna make that jump to make the big upfront investment in these systems are gonna use it to intensify their grazing. So they're gonna go from daily or couple moves a week — they're gonna start going to, if they were maybe two, three times a week, they're gonna go to daily. And if they were daily, they'll go to multiple daily moves. Most of the people that are interested in this right now are people that are already doing some kind of adaptive grazing, so they definitely do see the opportunity for a big increase in stocking rate or utilization or animal performance. That'll be the only way they can justify this.

And then we are also seeing people that have been continuous grazers or really low density rotational people up until this point taking that step to finally graze the way that they want to graze, but just have been limited by infrastructure or terrain up until this point.

Yeah. I heard that from somebody too that said, there's always one spot that the cows don't go to. Where if they had a virtual collar, you're actually grazing more consistently, and you're able to just make your spots better.

Yeah, for sure.

And so it would just, to me it would make sense. Like Tyson had all the numbers broke out. You'll enjoy the podcast. He had all the numbers broke out, and it paid for itself with more weight gain, with the time he's saving in tractors 'cause he's bale grazing and he's moving them from bale to bale rather than having to go out, and they stay within their boundary. It helped him not have so many people come to help move cows to a different location. Where he would normally need seven people, he did it himself.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Like, he has had really, really good experiences with it. It's a great podcast interview, but it's just like he didn't know about the other collars and those sort of things, where I knew that you had done a little more research on that. And you're working with different producers using different collars, using it in different ways. So it's good to hear from multiple people. And I've just had a lot of people ask about sheep and goats, you know?

Yeah.

Like, I have one client — I didn't even know about these virtual collars until a few weeks ago when I met with a potential client that she's got goats and she's using them to graze out her forest area. And she said now people are asking her if she can bring her goats to their place. And I thought, this goat grazing and cleaning up areas is a thing. Like I see people online making a lot of money with their goats doing that. But to put the fence up for them to not jump out — it's like how do you do that? Like, this just makes sense if you're gonna have a business of goat grazing.

Oh, absolutely. And I think that up until now the biggest barrier when I've tried to tell my clients, "Hey, you know, getting some sheep and goats in here would really help with this or that resource issue," they're like, "Oh, well, I don't have a fence that can keep 'em in." Well, now it's no longer an issue. And that's the only reason that I was willing to get sheep and goats is because I wasn't about to go and put up like multiple miles of net fence around my perimeter. I wasn't gonna be moving electric netting all the time. That was gonna be a huge labor constraint. So this has really just made small ruminant management feasible for me and for a lot of other people, that previously the fencing issue was the barrier, and now it's not anymore.

So how did you train them? Did you put flags out? How did you train them to stay within that boundary?

So I think that all the companies have like training instructions and training videos and stuff. So what I did with my animals is that I just put them in a trap or a corral anywhere between like one and five acres, and I set the boundaries of the virtual fence on either the barbed wire or on the corral fence so that they would walk up to that physical boundary and at the same time they would hear that collar start beeping. And so they would say, "Okay, well when I hear that beep I can't go any further. I have to turn around and go the other way." And then they kind of associate that. And then once, if they don't listen, they get that shock or they get that pulse and they're like, "Oh, okay, I really can't go that way."

Yep.

So it gets to where they don't hardly ever get the pulses. They just know to hear that sound and then they turn around. I've also heard, like especially researchers or people in the industry say, "Oh, well it's gonna be really stressful on animals to be getting shocked all the time when they don't know it's coming." I'm like, "First of all, they do know it's coming, and second, they get to where they're trained to the sound and they're not just getting shocked all the time." 'Cause OSU has done research on animal stress levels wearing virtual fence compared to physical electric fence, and they don't find any difference in stress levels. And so these collars aren't an animal welfare issue of any type.

That's interesting. Tyson did say, too, and I don't know if you can answer this question, that he's getting notifications when a cow isn't moving enough, you know, it's really helped him figure out, like, the health of the cattle, too, or if somebody's having a trouble calving or something. Have you seen with other collars that maybe your producers are using other types of collars? Do they have the same kind of capability, or have you researched, is there the same kind of capability on these other collars?

I think they're pretty similar right now. Like, they do have alerts for reduced activity, for no activity. They have alerts for escapes from the boundary. If an animal has gotten a certain number of pulses, you'll get an excessive pulse alert saying, "This animal's really not responding to this collar very well. Maybe you need to do something about this." So there are some animal health and performance and response metrics you get, and I really think that in the next few years all these systems are gonna become a lot more advanced in those areas.

You're gonna start getting heat detection alerts, animal vitals monitoring, and that kind of thing. With bulls you're gonna get mounting alerts. You may be able to get lameness and travel alerts, 'cause they've had this kind of thing in the dairy business for a long time. It's animal health monitoring, and now it's starting to make its way out into the pasture to be used for beef cattle. I was just at a conference the last couple days where there are ear tag-based animal health monitoring systems that are going to integrate virtual fence in the future and vice versa. So I think those two sectors are kind of gonna merge together and you're gonna end up with one animal-mounted device of some type that's gonna be both a virtual fence and a health and performance and activity monitor.

So would you, if I said to you, "Meg, what do I do? Do I wait or do I buy them today?" What would you suggest?

Oh, that's always the million-dollar question, and I've been struggling with that with my cattle. I mean, with the sheep and goats, to me it was a no-brainer because I wasn't gonna be able to have sheep and goats any other way. It wasn't gonna be feasible to me. But with the cattle, if you can make a meaningful increase in your land utilization by using these collars, I would definitely go ahead and do it, especially right now with the cattle market being so high. You probably have the most leverage now to pay for these collars than cattle producers have had in a long time. Everyone's making kind of big purchases right now just because they have money for a change.

So if you're gonna be able to go from, say, once a week moves to daily moves, or once a month moves to, like, weekly or daily moves, I mean, that is definitely gonna pay for itself just in increased forage utilization and in carrying capacity. And the hang-up here for me is that I'm already capable of doing kind of daily moves with my hot wire, and I really wouldn't be, I don't think, making a huge increase in forage utilization or stocking rate from doing this. It would just make my life easier. And I'm wondering if that's really where I need to be putting my money right now.

Yeah. So it's gonna be dependent. And here's the thing. Even if you buy 'em now and this new technology comes out later, you can sell them used and just upgrade like you are a car. I guess it's like saying, "Well, is that car gonna be more efficient and I have less breakdowns? I may as well just go buy a new car."

Yeah.

But, you know, I mean, there is potential for — be careful who you talk to about how much money people are making, 'cause the people on the interwebs are telling me I'm an idiot. That nobody's making money in the cattle industry.

I mean, people in, like, the feeder and stocker sectors probably aren't ending up with a whole lot more of a different margin than they ever did, but cow-calf guys are the ones that are making the money right now. As long as they're being careful not to blow it all on inputs or overhead items, or stupid decisions.

Well, you go look at the trolls on my page, Meg.

They're everywhere. Oh, yeah. And I get to do that, too, in my consulting deal, and just dealing with people in the ag industry in general. I mean, there's some people who are gonna be convinced we're never making any money.

Right. Exactly. Do you — I know you're a horse girl. Have you seen any of this technology for horses? Is there a need for the equine industry?

There have been whisperings from some of the European companies where these systems have been used extensively in Europe for many years now, that people have tried them on horses, donkeys, on pigs, on gosh knows whatever animal. The companies don't endorse that, but that's not to say somebody couldn't just kind of try it and see how it works.

I'm wondering with horses if the collar designs would work, 'cause a horse may be able to just paw them off over their heads. So I'm wondering if the collar designs would actually work. But I mean, horses being generally smarter than cattle and sheep and goats, I think that they would train to it really well over time. I have not tried it on any of my horses, but there's definitely potential there for it to be used that way.

And I'm wondering if maybe with the management of BLM horses or, like, wild horse, feral horse herds out west — I'm thinking that the animal rights people would flip out, but it may be able to ameliorate some of the issues out there with uncontrolled grazing causing ecological damage. You just don't see a lot of people grazing horses, but there are people that have a lot of horses.

And so especially where I'm at, we have a large number of rodeo stock contractors that may have anywhere from a couple dozen to a couple hundred horses. And I'm really thinking that it's a missed opportunity for them not to be doing some kind of adaptive grazing. But usually that's not what their focus is. It's keeping animals on a really high plane of nutrition, just stuffing feed into 'em, keeping 'em really fat and slick and shiny, and then hauling them to and from rodeos, sorting stuff, breeding stuff. So grazing management's usually pretty low on their list.

Yeah, and it shouldn't be, though. Like, do they even have acreage in those situations?

Yeah, I mean, there's contractors of all different sizes. Like my best friend and I, we only together have a couple hundred acres. We don't have much. But there are some guys out here that are multi-generational ranchers or guys that have money from some other business where they do own extensive land bases. And I think that they could significantly cut their feed costs if they implemented some kind of a managed grazing program.

But I have taken on stock on a custom grazing basis from rodeo companies, and Greg Judy got his start that way too. So custom cattle or custom horse grazing for rodeo operations is an opportunity that's out there for people. They've got their stock that they haul to rodeos that usually stays in the pens 'cause it's in and out all the time. But then they have herds of breeding stock that are just out there grazing, and those are the herds that really could be used for custom grazing, to get them off those guys' places.

So do you still have stock?

Right now all of our horses are in Amarillo at my friend's house for the summer. She keeps them out there, and then I usually get them for the winter. And then I have cattle right now. Like, I'm switching from having pairs for the winter, and I'm getting my yearlings in for the summer. The guy I work with, we've been doing that last couple years. Like, he'll just bring me pairs over the winter, and then yearlings for the summer. I have another herd of heifers that I'm developing for a guy on my other ranch. So yeah, there's cattle around, and then I've just brought the sheep and goats on within the last month now that we have some green forbs and green brush.

Well, I just think people need to know that Meg is very diversified. Rodeo stock, cattle, goats, sheep.

My goal is to monetize all of my resources without depleting any of them.

I love it. Is there anything else on the collars that I maybe didn't ask that you think is important for people to know?

Well, really, the big differences between the companies at this point revolve around whether or not a base station is needed, what's the collar design, and what is the pricing structure. I mean, everything else I think is pretty well equivalent. I mean, I have people that are using all of them and are happy with them. Nofence, Halter, and Gallagher. Monil is just launching, so I think that we're gonna see people start using that here soon. I might be one of them.

And then Vence — I didn't realize that Vence was even still a thing. I pretty much thought that they had gone defunct, but they're the only one that I really can't recommend just because their technology is so far behind. I mean, I think that they are mostly focusing on large Western landscapes, like in the mountains and stuff, and they're finding success with that customer base. But in Oklahoma, our producers really don't need either the overhead for the base station or really the usage of it. So in Oklahoma I think we're really gonna be seeing mostly just cell phone service based or satellite based systems with no base stations being used.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I know that you're a busy lady, so I appreciate your time and you sharing all of your info. If people have questions, where would you like them to reach you? How would you like them to reach you?

Oh, yeah, I would love to answer any additional questions. So my email is mgcows@gmail.com.

mgcows@gmail.com. Is there any place on social that you wanna send them?

I really don't do a whole lot of, like, educational or professional content on my social media. I mean, you could, like, add me on Facebook, look up my name, but it's probably gonna be mostly stupid memes about being single at an advanced age. Or, like, just, like, insanely… Or it's just gonna be a lot of pictures of my dog, so.

I liked watching the — were you bareback riding or saddle bronc?

It was ranch bronc, which is similar to saddle bronc, but you actually have to use the same saddle that you would ride in just to do ranch work.

Oh, okay. Yeah. That was fun watching you until you had some crashes, and then I wasn't so excited about your riding, but, you know.

Yeah. I still ride a little bit, but the ranch is just taking up so much of my bandwidth right now, and I'm getting more into, like, owning and breeding bucking stock and putting on rodeos with my friend. So I haven't been doing as much riding, but I'm not really ready to quit yet. Not really.

All right, Meg. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you again for everything, and I am happy to report that I am using my IBC as you have directed, and I love it, and it's great.

Oh, thank you. That is good to hear. I know it took you a while to get started, but here's another thing that I think people need to understand, is you were never going to be ready to start because you've always got a lot of stuff going on, so you just bit the bullet and started. And it's been working.

And I wish I had done that, like, five years before I did. But better late than never, unless you're never late, and that's not me, so.

Well, that is all fantastic to hear. All right, let me — you guys, if you have questions, comments, concerns, maryjo@withoutthebank.com. We'll have Meg's information in the notes. If you haven't gotten the book, if you're waiting to get started, you heard it from Meg, don't wait. Just get started. Figure out how to get it started.

Okay, you guys have a fantastic rest of your day.