Will No-Fence Collars Save You Money? (Ep. 359)

So I was still well over 100 pounds above what my previous average had been. Prior to say 2023 at 550 pounds, if I just use 50 calves, I'll try to use round numbers. I won't use 100, but I'll use 50 calves.
At $2.50 a pound, that's like $68,000 in calves. In 2026, that same 50 head, I'll use 650 pounds instead of 677 or 640, 100 pounds increase on those calves, the same 250, not the 350 that it is, that would be 81,000. So that was an increase of $12,500 without changing anything other than grazing practices.
And that's just one year. So to pay for your collars, kind of a no brainer.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. All right. Today, we're going to talk about cattle collars, goat collars, horse collars, collars, electric collars. I think that's what they're called. They're not electric. They're called what, Tyson?
Virtual fencing collars.
There you go. Virtual fencing. I'll get it right. You guys, this is new to me, and I'm sort of excited about it. Tyson Coles is a client of mine from Idaho. And we got to talking about virtual collars a couple of weeks ago, and Tyson knows all about it. So I was like, well, Tyson, will you talk about it?
And then I started talking to other people about it, posted on Facebook about it. And I was like, I had no idea. This was such a hot topic in the cattle industry.
So Tyson is going to answer a whole bunch of questions for us today. Are you ready?
Yeah.
All right. So first, let's start with, I think we got to put the groundwork in place. How long have you been using them?
I've been using the No Fence brand, virtual fencing collars, since October of 2022. So I'm going into my fourth full season using them.
Okay. And how many cattle are you running?
I'm running them on 65 pair right now, plus about five bulls.
Okay. So we're going to go over the costs first. What are the costs of the collars? How did you justify it? All the things.
So the No Fence collars that I have, they are a purchase. There are different companies that set it up differently on like a lease structure or something.
From No Fence, they are a purchase. And they have a five-year warranty that comes with them.
And these ones are, they use cellular technology, like a cell phone, to communicate with their mobile app to update data to receive their boundary updates.
Some of the others use base stations and radios, but the ones that I have use cell phone connectivity.
And so the cell data package, if you will, is included when you buy the collar for the first year.
They have a different tiered pricing structure, depending on how many collars you're buying.
They have a minimum of five. So if you need one collar, you got to work something out there to try to find out how to get rid of the other four or something,
or just buy five collars and have a backup. But from five to 24 collars, I believe it's $349.
And I've got that pricing pulled up here. Yeah. And that's, that's each $349 each for five to 24 collars.
If you're in the 25 to 99 collar range, they're $309.
And then if you're a hundred plus collars, you can, on No Fence's website, you can hit chat with representative or send them an email.
And then they'll get you some special pricing for larger, larger quantities.
So you paid per collar and then you got free data package for the first year, correct?
Yes.
And then after that, so when we talked,
you had kind of talked about how you figured how it was going to pay for itself.
Yes. Yeah. And I, I kind of looked at some of those numbers again this morning,
just to have them ready for you.
And initially the things I was looking at was I've got 135 acres that I rent that I do try and graze in the fall,
but I've just put electric fence around the outside.
It used to have a good solid perimeter fence,
but it kind of fallen down over the years and needed to be redone.
And so I looked at kind of what the expenses would be of physically fencing this 135 acres with a four strand barbed wire fence,
T posts, corner posts, and there's two irrigation canals that go through it.
So it wouldn't just be one, three and a half mile long fence.
It'd be three different fences going around the canals and stuff as well.
And so all the materials and what I figured for labor of building the fence would cost about $18,000 using 2023 numbers.
2026, I didn't get a chance to fully get an update,
but I don't think the price of T posts has gone down any barbed wire, maybe a little bit,
but it's all still pretty expensive from what it was pre COVID.
And for using round numbers at the time, I was looking at a hundred callers.
So a hundred cows, I want to get my cow herd back up to a hundred head.
And so with the numbers there, the callers, I figured in,
they initially had like the caller and then pay for the description and kind of break it out that way.
Now they've kind of got a group together.
But a hundred callers would cost about $40,000.
That is kind of figuring in the second year of cell phone subscription.
So you take that out of it about $36,000.
So it was about double the money.
But you didn't figure in your time to put the fence up.
An hourly rate.
I figured, yeah, I figured 80 hours at 40 bucks an hour.
So a couple of guys at least doing it.
Okay.
So cost per acre, essentially just with the physical fence was 136 bucks per acre.
The virtual fencing side, in addition to those 135 acres,
I was pulling in another 300 acres of dry land that I farm that I've been doing cover crops on.
And the cover crops in Idaho in the dry land scenario are kind of hard.
Sometimes it's too dry and you don't get good emergence or it's too cold and wet in the fall and you don't get anything.
So it's been hit and miss.
But calculating in some extra acres there, the cost per acre showed $93.
So about $35 to $40 per acre savings if you can graze some additional acres.
And then when I first got them, it was October.
And I was part of a pilot testing program for no fence bringing them into the U.S. market.
They're originally based out of Norway.
And so trying to figure out how to utilize them in the fall when I got them and not wait till just the next grazing season.
I have two small 35 acre pivots behind my house.
And so I was kind of letting some of the cover crop that I'd been grazing on regrow.
You know, it was October.
Nothing's growing too much.
But I got my collars put on the cows.
I went through the training period that no fence recommended.
And then I turned the cows out.
I had been grazing around these pivots with electric fence wire quartering the pivots.
So they would get, you know, eight acres at a time.
And I'd rotate them every couple of days with physical fence.
And so I just mimicked that same scenario with virtual fencing that fall.
And it worked exactly like it did with the physical wire.
And I went around both pivots.
And then I was done.
I had nothing else to graze.
I'd already grazed everything off end of October.
So I was thinking, OK, well, how am I going to utilize the collars throughout the winter and test them?
I've been bell grazing as well throughout the winter.
Usually we get a fair amount of snow.
I do three by three hay bales.
I would take six of them out on the tractor, three at a time, lay them out and kind of spread them out for the cows and let them eat out in the field.
So I was saying, OK, well, I have GPS on my tractors because I farm as well as ranch.
And so I set my track spacing on my GPS on my tractor at 100 feet.
And I'd line out a row of hay.
And then I lined out a second row of hay for the second day.
And I set my virtual boundary on my phone between where those rows of hay were.
As I was laying it out, I marked a line on my virtual fence app to indicate where I'd place the hay.
And then I gave me a visual reference as to where to put my virtual boundary.
And so I did it the first day.
It worked fine.
I noticed the cows would get all the way to the second row of hay, but they would only last 45 seconds to a minute.
And then they would go back to the other hay.
So I was I was watching them, but I was about 150, 200 yards away.
So I couldn't hear the audible tones, but I knew what was going on.
They were getting audible tones because the way it works is as you set your boundary,
as the animal gets close to the boundary, they first get an audible tone indicating that they're getting close to a boundary.
And then if they continue going, it increases in pitch right up to the point that it will shock them.
And it will do that a series of three times before it sends me an alert saying that they escaped.
But at this point, grazing the hay, it didn't get to where they got shocked.
I never got an alert on my phone that they got shocked.
So they were just getting audible tones.
And then they went back to the row of hay.
So how do you train them?
Now that we're on that subject, let's just talk about how I know we're going to jump ahead a little bit.
But how do you it's one of my questions.
How do you train them?
Like we've had the electric fences for our dogs and you have to put flags up.
And I do have a client that has goats and she uses them on her goats.
And she also puts flags up.
So do you do that with the cows, too?
No, I didn't with the cows.
And the way that NoFence recommended it as we got started with this process was get a pasture that's got physical fence on all four sides that they're used to.
They're accustomed to being there.
And then you make your virtual boundary overlaid on top of this physical fence.
And on three of the sides, you extend the boundary out beyond where the physical wire is so that they're not coming close to it.
And then on one side, then you bring that boundary in front of the physical fence so that they can learn to interact with the audible tones prior to getting shocked.
And then if they go through the audible tones and get shocked, then they start to learn what the cause and effect is of not listening to the audible tone.
But if they get through that virtual fence, they're still contained with a physical fence initially.
They recommended doing it for a week.
I gave my cows three weeks initially because I was waiting for that crop to kind of regrow to try and graze it in October.
So my cows had plenty of time.
And while they were training, I was taking hay into them inside the boundary so they could eat and interact.
Since then, I've had yearling calves that I've put new collars on that they've had three days and they've done OK.
They may get shocked a little more initially, but they're watching the rest of the cows and hanging with the herd.
And so they pick it up pretty quickly.
So you're not putting them in a physical fence to train them.
They're having to learn the hard way.
Those ones, they still got physical fence, but it was a shorter duration of time.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, I still try to train them based on their recommendations just to not have the cows get shocked all the time.
So let's go back to the cost.
I had a lot of questions, too, about cost of batteries.
I'm assuming the battery cost is in the collar when you first buy it.
It is.
Have you had to replace any batteries?
And what does that look like?
I've had a few batteries.
Most of it was they were updating manufacturers.
And so most of them they warranted out and sent me new replacement batteries.
The batteries are like $90 a piece, $80 a piece, somewhere in that ballpark.
They do recommend when you purchase your collars that you get an additional one battery for every 10 head.
So I had 75 collars is what I have.
And so I got an extra eight batteries when I got it.
And the same with a wall charger to actually plug it on to charge the battery initially.
You can use the solar panels on the collar itself, sit it out on a post in the sun.
It does take longer.
So the initial charge for the battery, because they come depleted.
And this, they were shipping them from Norway at the time.
So to get them over here, they had to be depleted.
Now they're based out of St. Paul, Minnesota here in the U.S.
And so they do have inventory in the states that they're shipping from.
But I would still plug eight collars in at a time.
I got the same number of chargers as I got extra collars.
And so I would pre-charge them, get them at 100%, and then put them in the collars,
make sure software is up to date, and then we put them on the cows.
So there's an actual panel outside that's charging them as they're grazing.
Yes.
Yeah, these collars have a solar panel built onto it that keeps them charged as they're grazing.
Oh, okay.
The collar has a solar panel.
Yes.
So how does that ever deplete then?
Or it's not going to deplete?
No, they've done really well on battery life.
And they've tweaked some things and changed some things to software
for the way the grazing management works and everything.
That initially, I had probably 50% of my collars that went two years on not replacing a battery.
You know, the initial charge got it.
They do propose that they'll last a grazing season.
I mean, that's what all the companies are shooting for.
But I had a great experience with that.
A lot of them I didn't have to touch.
The solar panel just kept them charged.
Last year, they had some different modes to select for how your caller responded.
Performance mode was calling in frequently.
It was getting updates, sending updates.
But if the cows are interacting with the fence as well more frequently, getting audible tones,
getting shocks, you know, when they're training, you know, it's going to use more battery than
if they just don't get audible tones, don't get shocks, which some cows, they just hang right
in the middle of the herd and they don't get audible tones or shocks.
So last year, I left mine in what they called performance mode.
They also had an eco mode and another mode in between.
And I noticed that it did deplete a little more last season.
This year, they've kind of changed that again to allow the app to manage the battery level a little bit better.
And so, you know, we'll see what this is going into.
But I didn't see initially a color drop between below 70% battery.
Last year, I had some get down to 20%.
But usually, you know, in the middle of summer, we get a lot of hours of sun and they would charge
them back up throughout the winter months.
You know, I was kind of wondering if it was going to deplete more because there's not as
much sun.
But they did just fine, you know, bell grazing.
And they do, you know, on the pricing structure, I guess, going back to that year two, they allow you to either elect to go month to month or to go annually.
So if you go month to month and then, say, in the wintertime, you plan on pulling them into a feedlot and just feed them and you want to take the collars off, leave the batteries out of the collars and they don't charge you for those months of use.
In my scenario, bell grazing, I found that it's more advantageous to just leave the collars on the cows.
And then I've tweaked how I feed my cows throughout the winter that if you do it annually anyways, you basically pay for eight months and then get four months free as far as how the numbers work out.
So you have the collars on all year?
I have the collars year round.
But if they're not being used, you're not getting charged on that collar?
Paying annually?
I guess not necessarily.
Yeah, paying monthly you would be.
If the battery is inserted for more than three days for a period within a month, you'll get billed for that month.
So are they charging per battery or are they charging per collar?
Well, the collar is the one connecting to the cell signal.
The battery has to be inserted into the collar for it to communicate.
So if the battery is removed, then it's not communicating.
Okay, you said battery.
So I just wanted to make sure because we have extra batteries.
So if I pay for a year and I got five cows that die, I'm going to pay on those five cows.
But if I'm paying monthly and I lose five cows, I'm not paying on those because that collar is inactive.
Correct.
Okay.
But I've found economically that it works better for me the way I feed that I just leave it on for the year.
Because since I tested that in October and found out that the virtual fencing will keep the cows away from the row of hay,
even with 100% snow cover and nothing else to do, nothing else to eat,
the rows of hay, I have got to where I feed for seven days, nine days.
I take all my hay out for a week on one day.
And then the rest of the week, I just move my virtual boundary on my phone.
I don't have to go start up the tractor and haul it out there.
And so that's equated to quite a bit of cost savings.
So that you did not figure in your little spreadsheet.
I did not.
No, not initially.
But I do have some of those numbers that I kind of worked up.
So I purchased my tractors, a lease scenario, you know, if somebody's leasing tractors,
they're on a cost per hour is how that lease is structured.
And so if I was feeding throughout the winter, I would start up my tractor.
You know, if it's negative 20 outside, I still got to start up the tractor.
So I'm going to try and plug it in or I'm going to either way, I'm going to let it warm up 10,
15 minutes just to get everything warmed up before I go grab hay and truck it out.
So usually it would equate to an hour a day just throughout the winter, warming up the tractor,
going to get the hay and feeding them seven days a week.
So there's 28 hours a month, you know, seven, seven hours a week times four weeks in a month,
round numbers, 28 hours there.
Doing it with virtual fencing, I can go lay it out on Friday or Saturday whenever my kids are out of school.
They can help cut the twine off the hay bales as I'm lining them out with the GPS.
And so one day a week, we cut that down to three hours total.
So over four weeks in a month, we went from 28 hours down to 12 hours on the tractor.
So that adds up.
Fuel savings there, I kind of calculated about 112 gallons a month times 450 a gallon.
Right now it's higher.
So there's 500 bucks a month in fuel.
Labor, 28 hours versus 12 hours.
You're going for 180 bucks instead of 420 bucks.
And then the cost of that lease payment or hours on the tractor, you know, that does have a cost to it.
So I figured I dropped from like $1,800 a month in fuel and equipment to $770 a month.
So I saved $1,000 a month there just in fuel, tractor and labor.
And then with that, what I've seen additionally is I have been able to graze more acres and I've extended my grazing season.
So I've then in turn had to feed less dry hay.
So then I could either resell that hay or keep it stored for the following winter.
And so there's a cost benefit there too to having that.
There's a lot of little things that you found along the way.
Yes.
That you didn't have figured in right away.
Yes.
So what is a lifespan on a collar?
How many collars have you replaced due to them being broken?
That I've replaced because a cow physically broke it.
I have had cows pasture around equipment that's parked in the pasture and stuff.
They have got some caught on there and hung up and I'll try to go help them out and they'll rip the top off of it.
There's only been like two or three.
Since we've kind of, I started testing with them and they've gone through hardware change anyways.
And they ended up warranting out.
I think I've only got six collars left that are the original generation.
So I'm on their next generation collars that didn't cost me anything.
They just did them out.
But they've survived.
They've survived.
Outside of a cow ruining it and getting hooked on something, have you had to replace them for other reasons besides an uptown?
No, no, no.
They've been very durable.
Solar panels, they look banged up and beat up, but they're still keeping the batteries charged and still going.
So some of the technical questions I got were, how hard is the software to use?
So let's talk about ranchers aren't the most technology savvy individuals.
And so, I mean, I'm getting them on a Zoom call.
Sometimes that's a big deal.
So how hard is it to learn everything?
Do they have a good training module?
What does that look like?
No, they've been really simple.
And I am one of the technology savvy guys.
I love technology going through high school and college.
And I worked at a John Deere dealership doing GPS systems there for 10 years prior to being able to come back to the farm full time and ranching.
So this was right up my alley on things to do.
So maybe you're not the best one to ask about that.
Maybe not that one.
It is pretty simple.
I have my eight and nine-year-old kids feed the cows for me in the winter periodically.
They just get on the app.
But I mean, they know the technology.
So, I mean, that comes to them real easy.
But just the fact that it is simple.
I mean, when you load the app, it's all app based.
They don't do anything off of a Windows PC or anything.
So you need a tablet or a cell phone, a smartphone or something that way.
But when it loads, it just loads you to basically a Google Map image of your operation, where the cows are.
You can have them in different pastures, you know, spread apart.
They don't recommend having two different pastures where the animals can see each other because then herd mentality, they want to go see what the next animals are doing.
But if they're just down the road a quarter mile right now, I've got my bulls a quarter mile down the road in a separate pasture from where the cows are because I'm calving right now.
So then do you set up two pastures within the app?
Yeah, I set up two pastures within the app and I can designate which collars.
When you set up the collars, you know, they're coming serial numbered.
And then you can cross those serial numbers with your ear tag numbers or something that way that you're managing your herd with.
And so then I just name this collar as this cow's ear tag.
And then I know which collar because it gives you a little icon on the app as to which little dot is which cow.
And so then you can just designate this collar, you know, either individually or as a group to this pasture.
And so you can have multiple different pastures set up.
I've got rangeland up on the river 20 miles away on my other farm.
That's the dry farm.
And so I've got one set up there.
I've got one set up here at home.
And then you can just select which different pastures that the animals are designated to.
And so, you know, it brings you to that page initially.
Then you've got a button on the bottom for your pastures where you can actually go in and just create any number of pastures you want.
Then you've got a button for the collars that will just give you a list of all the collars and ones that are on a pasture or ones that are not registered in a pasture, not, you know, deactivated at the moment.
And then you've got kind of some settings and stuff.
So it's really pretty simple.
If you want to adjust the boundary on a pasture, you just go to the pasture page, select the pasture that you want to go into.
And then it basically is just a line with some dots on the screen that you can push and hold the dot and drag and drop based off the aerial.
So it's it's really simple to use that way.
And, you know, you can have different pastures next to each other and have them move to a new pasture at any time.
I found on my operation, it's easier to just maintain the same pasture and then just extend and retract the boundaries.
And then everybody's always contained.
They get the updates and then they can move.
Updating and changing the boundaries is kind of where some of the different companies have differences.
No offense, they I asked them about it while I was in the training when I heard of some other companies allowing you to pre-program your moves to different pastures throughout the area for grazing management.
And no offense, they allow you to have one active pasture at a time.
And that's mainly due to animal husbandry.
They want you at least still interacting with your animals, being around, eyes on them, you know, just just to be a good steward of your herd.
Some of the other companies, which could be advantageous, but could allow you to set them and forget them type of a deal that you can pre-program like up to a week's worth of moves, you know, just initially.
And so you could have day one, they're going to be in this paddock.
Day two, they're going to automatically move to the next, to the next, the next.
And no offense doesn't do that.
So if you're moving them to the next pasture and I may say pasture, I may say paddock.
I used to always just call everything pasture, but more and more I've heard people call them paddocks.
So I, I've kind of come to use them interchangeably.
And now I guess, you know, pasture could be a larger area in the paddock, the smaller one within the pasture, I guess.
But if you move the animals to the, to the next pasture, it's going to deactivate the active one and does not activate the second one until their GPS position puts them physically within where that boundary would be.
And so at that point, when it's deactivated, if they don't go into that next boundary, it's not going to activate, not going to contain them.
So that's where I, you either have to make your secondary paddock large enough to incorporate the one they're currently in plus where you want them to go,
or just extend the one they're currently in and keep moving them that way.
And that's, that's what I've come to do just because in my brain, you know, rancher brain also, that's just simpler to just drag and drop.
I'm not moving and having an opportunity for an animal to escape and go somewhere else.
And then the whole herd wanting to go with them the wrong direction as to where I want.
So they will, you don't have to even physically be out there.
You can just move your line and they'll just gradually work their way that way.
Yes.
Or when one or two realize they're not getting shocked and they move, then everybody else kind of moves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That would be cool if they had a signal, a different signal that the fence opened and now the cows heard that so they could go.
Yeah.
And I don't know about audible signal.
I know Halter, which is one of the other companies, they use vibrations to kind of indicate where they want the animal to go.
What I found on my herd is, yeah, I've got certain animals that I call them my boundary finders that as I was testing throughout the course of the week, one cow in particular, she would get over 2000 audible tones.
But like two shocks was all she ever got.
She knew where the boundary was, but she knew not to get shocked.
So it tells you which and how many times a certain animal is getting an audible tone.
Do you know who the troublemaker is?
Yes, it does.
It'll tell you the battery levels.
It'll tell you the audible tones, the shocks, the number of escapes they've had.
You can change it from day to week to month, you know, for tracking purposes.
And so with this animal in particular, when I would move the boundary, she's always knowing where the boundary is.
So it doesn't take usually more than a minute or two and the herd's moving.
And getting the callers to update has kind of been one thing that all the companies, Gallagher, Vents, Halter, there's a little bit of a delay before all the callers would get the updates.
So initially, they'd all say like 12 to 15 minutes.
So caller one, which I saw initially that caller one may get the update, but caller 30 may not.
And so half of the animals are trying to move and others are getting audible tones and getting shocked.
And I found that a lot when I would physically go out there to indicate to the cows that it's time to move, because that's what I did with the electric wire.
I would go open a gate and allow them to go into the next paddock.
And I tried that initially and I found the callers didn't update fast enough for what I was doing.
So then I decided I needed to stay away so that they didn't have a visual cue that it was time to move.
And then just as they found it, usually by then the callers were updated and then they would all move.
Nobody would get shocked.
So how long does it take those callers to update?
Well, now, NoFence, as of last fall, didn't update to their system and they're calling it HerdNet, which I saw in the app before they actually released it, that they have Bluetooth technology as well built into it so that you can hook your phone to the caller via Bluetooth to locate it with an audible tone or to remove it from a pasture if you need to get them in a trailer or moved out of the pasture or whatever separate.
And through the Bluetooth, they've interconnected the callers to each other.
So if one caller pulls in the update for the boundary, it'll Bluetooth it to the next caller next door.
And so I've timed it.
And usually like last night when I fed, it was less than a minute.
My whole herd had updated.
And I was asking the cows from the window.
I was standing here watching them at the house.
They're just behind the house.
It's like, well, how long is it going to take you guys to notice that I went down?
And the callers were all updated within a minute.
And it was like three minutes.
The whole herd finally found it.
And they moved and they were eating a row of hay for the day.
So that's been a great improvement to having them just update quick.
Well, you could take a vacation maybe.
I have kind of done that.
Not so much.
But I have done.
We're not talking like weeks.
But, you know.
Well, I've done presentations at some soil health conferences here in the western U.S.
Down in Salt Lake, St. George, Utah.
And I've fed my cows from nine hours away as part of my presentation.
That I actually did take the family.
And we went down for three or four days during this conference.
And I just had to have my neighbor or my brother close by make sure the cows were good on water.
And I already had the hay lined out for the week that I took my one minute.
And I adjusted my boundary.
And the cows were fed.
And that's what I did as my presentation.
I was feeding it.
Like, typically I feed at 4.30 or 5 in the afternoon.
My presentation started at like 3.30 till 4.30.
So, I was like, ah, it's close enough.
So, at the start of my presentation, you know, I was plugged into my tablet so it could be seen on the projector.
I dropped my boundary, moved it, allowed it to update.
And then I just left it and went through the rest of my presentation.
And at the end, I came back to that page on the app and showed everybody that, okay, here's the line where the cows were.
You all saw that.
Here's where the cows are now.
They're fed for the day.
I didn't have to do anything.
So, yeah, time management, it definitely helps with family life.
You know, I did this a couple of weeks ago.
Me and my son were looking at our phones.
You know, how much screen time we had because we're trying to help him to learn that he doesn't need to be the phone all the time.
And I noticed for the Sunday evening, my No Fence app was open for one minute.
And that's all the time it took me to feed cows that day.
So, definitely got some savings there that you don't really put numbers to.
Yeah.
So, are you working off of a tower?
Are you working off a satellite?
Are you hilly?
Like, what's your terrain look like for a reception?
It's mostly flat here at home.
We're in the valley.
We're in the Snake River Plain just east of Idaho Falls.
Our dry land is more up in the hills right on the edge of the Snake River.
And it's got some cliffs and some mountains on the side.
That cell signal does get pretty sketchy down there, you know, as far as trying to make a phone call.
And I was kind of concerned about taking the callers up there with the cows initially.
But since they've been there, I've never really had them miss a call in.
They call in every 15 minutes anyways to update position and send data and receive downloads.
And I didn't have a minute's trouble with them.
These ones are all cell phone based.
I don't have to have a base station with radio.
They do all use GPS for positioning and for containment.
And then they use the no fence ones use cell signal to communicate with the app.
And that's where Gallagher and Halter and Vents would use their base stations.
Gallagher does offer an option that you can get either or.
You can get callers that work with a radio or you can get callers that work cellular as well.
How big of a radius does one caller cover?
With the cell signal could be infinite as long as you've got cell coverage.
With the radio callers, that is, again, based off of topography and terrain.
You know, it's more line of sight type of setup.
So if you've got hillier terrain or your operation spans more acres,
you'd have to have multiple base stations to keep coverage.
So that's where having two farms 20 miles away, I have a cell signal there.
I didn't have to worry about base stations.
So it all is going to come back to each individual operation.
What brand, what color design is going to fit their operation at this point?
When we talked, you had given a few examples of the app, which I thought was like super cool.
And a couple of people I've talked to had no idea the app would notify you
if a cow is in distress or hung up on a piece of equipment or something.
So can you talk a little bit about some of those things?
Yeah.
So the app will send me alerts for, you know, if an animal has had too many shocks throughout
the day, if they escaped or if they have reduced movement detected.
So if the cow's normally moving, however much a cow moves throughout the day,
and then it detects that they haven't been moving as much,
it'll send me alert that reduced movement is detected.
And so I've noticed that on animals that end up snagging their foot on some wire or getting cut
or something that they're limping and they're not moving around as much.
I've had that scenario up on my dry farm where I'm 20 miles away and not there,
you know, as frequently as I am here.
Or, you know, I just had one a couple of weeks ago where the calf, you know, I'm calving right now.
It was kind of deformed in the womb, had a curve in one of the bones on the rear leg.
And so it couldn't stand up and move around like a normal calf would.
So the mother was just hanging right there with her calf.
And so then I did get an alert from her saying that she wasn't moving around as much.
I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, you had told me too, like you had gotten notification
that one of your cows was not behaving normally.
And she was having trouble calving because she kept doing circles or something.
That's this one with the calf.
The calf.
Oh, okay.
She could stand up, but trying to catch her balance because she couldn't really put any
weight on that back right leg.
She would just constantly be spinning in circles, trying to get her balance to try and nurse off
her mother and stuff.
So at what point do you put a collar on the calf?
They recommend the calves being at least six months old, just so cognitively they can understand
the cause and effect between audible tones and shocks.
And then physically just making sure they're big enough to have a collar hanging around their neck.
They're not super heavy, but they're around five pounds.
So the younger calves would be a little bit of a struggle.
They do.
And they know you don't have problems with the calves leaving the mom.
No, because I still do have a perimeter fence and that's kind of led to some of the other
economic benefits that I've seen that we can get into.
But, but no, I am a cow calf operation.
So I don't put collars on my calves until after they're weaned and I'm going into what would
be their second year of life, the second season for them.
But I do have a perimeter fence around whatever pasture I'm grazing on just because I do have
calves there that don't have collars and they'll, they'll wander.
You know, as they get older as I'm in the fall, you know, I calve between April 15th and May 15th
typically is my calving window.
And so come September, October, November, I'm grazing other farms, cover crop behind a
weed or barley crop or alfalfa fields or something.
So by this time they're six, seven, eight months old and they're, they're going to wander.
They're going to go do what they want to do.
And they'll be up to a half mile away from their mothers at any given time.
And it's no big deal.
They, they go back to them.
But I just make sure I keep a perimeter fence there.
But as I've kind of worked with the virtual fencing last few years, I usually have been
planting a spring planted cover crop mix, usually 12 to 15 different plant varieties in it.
And then I'll start grazing on end of May and I'll graze through the end of October on it before
I have to start grazing to other, other fields typically.
And initially that's where I did it with the physical wire.
I'd give 70 pairs, eight acres, and I'd rotate them every day and a half, every two days.
And now I've kind of reduced herd size a little bit and I split the herd.
Some go to the dry farm and then most of them stay here.
It's about two thirds here, one third up there.
And I'll graze them around under center pivots so that I can irrigate the crop just after
they've grazed it and then try to have it irrigated a couple of days prior to the cows
going there.
And so now I'm kind of just going 40 pair on one 35 acre pivot.
And I will give them two acres every 12 hours that I'm moving.
Some people move more frequently than that.
Some people are keeping them tighter, moving them multiple times a day.
But that's a small paddock.
But yeah.
So that was one of my questions too, is how small can the paddock be?
Because I did see some of the comments on Facebook is one of the fences or one of the virtual fence
companies couldn't go small enough.
Yeah.
So no fence is the only one that I'm aware of that does collars for sheep and goats also
in addition to cattle.
And some of the people that were in our pilot test program were doing goats on roadsides
or something that way to help clean up weeds.
But one of the people on there in the group was saying that they were down to like 17 feet
was as close as they've done.
I mean, the GPS accuracy is really what's coming into play there.
You're not using an RTK sub-inch differential correction signal on the GPS.
It's using just a satellite-based differential correction.
So there is satellite drift.
There is variability in that signal.
So I haven't gone too tight.
I've had, well, right now, because I've got the cows, it's greening up.
We're planting and everything.
We had a very mild winter.
But I've got the whole herd with calves locked into like an acre and a half, just virtually,
because I moved them out of a pasture that I've had them in because I planted some stuff
in there that I wanted to start growing.
And now they're just in a small area.
And then that's increasing every day as I allow them to go to their next row of hay.
Prior to here in a week, I'll be starting to graze around the pivots again a little bit.
But yeah, it's pretty small.
I mean, I know that's been talk in some of the soil health and regenerative farming worlds
is that intensive management grazing, you know, they're shooting for like a million pounds
per acre.
And I haven't done the math on how close I'm getting to that.
But it's usually I kind of go either in a clockwise or counterclockwise rotation with
my center pivot.
I water them at the pivot point, you know, as the water is coming through the main line
pipe to the pivot, I'll put a ball valve on there.
I'll just put a hose and a couple of water troughs there at the pivot point.
And I leave the pivot point open now virtually that they can go all the way around either
side and have access to water at all times, matter where I move.
And then I just kind of do a clock rotation around that I'll, you know, as they're going
towards the corner of the field, that's a lot longer versus the side.
You know, it'll be longer and skinnier versus right north, south, east, or west.
It may be wider and a little shorter.
So I try to just keep it at two acres, whatever kind of shape it ends up being.
And then the cows just kind of work that.
And then, you know, I, that's usually one of the first things that I do in the summertime.
I'll wake up, I'll change their boundary, and then I'll go on throughout my day.
And then in the afternoon, evening, I'll change the boundary again, and I'll keep going on
throughout the day.
I don't go out there.
I don't give them any visual cues.
I go out there and fill the water troughs and check on them.
But it's at a different time from when I'm moving their boundaries.
Do you think there's a limit to how many acres and how many cattle can, like if I have 500
head of cattle versus 65 head, or if I'm in Montana on 25,000 acres versus somebody that
is doing like small grazing paddocks, does it work for everybody?
Yeah, it'll work for everybody.
I mean, I don't know of any limits to, you know, how large of a paddock you could do or
how small.
I think they were updating it.
There was a limit on the number of posts that you could put virtually, you know, a virtual
fence post, which I came into on one spot on my rangeland pasture as I was trying to curve
around a mountain with a road.
I'd put more, but I think they've adjusted.
And it was a pretty large amount.
I mean, it was still 45 posts or 40 posts or something like that.
But you can drag and drop and make them as long or as big or as small as you need.
The only limiting factor there would be terrain and signal, either cell phone or radio signal.
You know, if you had enough day stations, you could make it as big as you needed that way
too.
It sounds like they do updates a lot.
Are the updates annoying like they are on your cell phone?
No, I don't even really know they happen.
They just do it and go to the callers.
So they've never done an update where the callers all shut off and all of a sudden you lose all
your boundaries.
No, no, I've never had a problem.
The only time we've had a little bit of a problem was on some solar flares with GPS drift that
has caused some interference with the GPS signal.
And so it may sink the callers physically outside the boundary when it's not.
It's usually been the last couple of years when I'm calving right now and my cows are locked
in a specific pasture anyway with a physical wire around them.
But that's going to affect any GPS signal.
I mean, it affected John Deere on their guidance systems on the tractors and Trimble and everybody
at that time too.
So one of the other questions I had is how do you deal with animals that ignore the callers?
Have you ever had one that does?
Does she go to town just like the one that ignores a fence?
Yeah.
The only time I found that they ignore the callers has been if there was a problem with the
collar that it was not shocking.
The shock is mean enough shock that the cows don't want to take the shock.
So if it gets to where I'm getting audible tones that an animal's getting shocked or escaping,
it's usually been indicative that I've had a fault in the collar and it's no longer giving
them a shock.
They don't take the shocks just to take the shocks.
I've taken the shock and it is not fun.
It hurts.
Have you had cattle that have lost their collar?
Like you see it and you think, oh, that thing looks like it could fall off pretty easily.
Yeah, it does go back to Fitment and they do have some training on doing that.
And they actually just did a webinar a couple of weeks ago and we're doing one for first
time users here a couple of days ago or this week they were doing one.
So they are doing some training.
They have training videos on YouTube.
Yeah.
Fitment comes into play quite a bit.
I've noticed on the bulls, I have to keep their collars tighter than the cows just because
their neck gets so big that they can slide off.
So I have had them leave them hanging on T-posts.
I've had them leave them hanging in trees just on the ground.
But usually it's because I didn't have it tight enough.
Yeah.
And more so on the bulls.
I had one bull that he found he could get it off.
So I'd put it back on and a week later he'd have it right back off.
And so I got his a little tighter and now he does great.
And the bulls, my bulls are more docile than my cows are.
You know, my whole herd, they're not super friendly that I can walk up to them out in the
pasture and just rub on them.
But they don't bolt the other direction when I go out there.
They're used to me being around.
So this bull, you know, I didn't have a chute to run them in, but I had an alleyway.
You know, I'd go get the collar because it gave me GPS position of where the collar was.
And as I got close and I could use the Bluetooth feature to have it
blare an audible tone for me so I could find it.
I've never lost a collar.
I've always go back and find it.
Even if the cows, you know, have lost it to where they're not wearing it on their neck anymore.
But I've always gone and got it and put it right back on.
So I just walked up in front of this bull and put it on.
I wasn't worried about him running over me or anything.
So everybody else, though, we got to run them through the chute to get that collar back on.
Initially, yeah, the cows and my cows don't like my squeeze chute at all.
So I usually have just ended up running them down an alleyway.
You know, I crowd four or five of them in an alleyway and I just go through the side of
the panels on the alley.
I don't worry about running them through the chute.
It's usually quicker because I do four or five at a whack instead of one.
But the initial install, you know, we did it through the squeeze chute so that we could
make sure fitment was right.
And we were learning, you know, at the same time as well.
But so how often do you have to adjust the size?
Like you're putting them on as what, a yearling?
Yeah.
And then so how often are you running them through to adjust size then?
Usually, you know, the yearling calves, I'll tighten them up more so than what the mother
cows are just because I know that they are going to try to get rid of them initially and their
necks are a little smaller, but still have a little bit of room to where they can grow into
it.
And I actually haven't had to run them in more than like once a year on those younger
ones.
And usually once they're full size, you know, you don't even have to worry about it.
You're good.
A lot of people are questioning too, how is it helping you with sorting or how do you sort
with them?
I don't use it too much for sorting just because herd mentality.
I have done a little bit of it and it does work, but, you know, bulls, I can use it a lot
easier than I can the cows.
The bull doesn't care if he's wandering away from the herd by himself.
The cows, you know, if you try to take one cow away from the herd, my experience, they'll
take the shock and they'll go get back in the herd because they want to be with the herd.
Other companies have said that they'll help use it for sorting that you can put, say, animals
that have calved already in this group and animals that haven't calved in this group.
And it does stop the animals.
You know, they stop and think about it because they're getting audible tones.
It varies on animal too.
Some of them won't worry about going through it.
Others, they want to get back with the herd.
They're getting wound up because you're trying to separate them from the herd.
And then they just take their shock and they'll go get back with the herd.
So I haven't used it with sorting too much.
You know, I'll kind of just take the whole herd in the yard and I'll sort within a corral
and then I'll do it that way.
You know, one of the things that we, I'm going to go back to the cost a little bit in
your cost savings, because one of the things you told me when we met the other day that
we have not brought up yet is how when you move them, you're letting the calves have more
grazing.
And so you're actually, when you're weaning them, their weight gain is higher.
Yeah.
And that's some of the numbers I went back to this morning to look at.
Because, yeah, as I've been grazing the cows on this cover crop, you know, I'm containing
a herd of 40 to two acres.
But the calves, they're able to wander a couple hundred yards outside, quarter mile outside,
and they'll go select what they want to eat.
And so the guy I sell my calves to the last couple of years, we've kind of noticed our
weaning weights, our calf weights have been higher.
And so we were just talking about why would that be?
Because I haven't changed genetics.
I haven't changed bulls.
I haven't calved earlier or anything.
The only thing I've done is how I've managed my grazing is the cows are staying contained.
The calves are able to go out and get whatever they want ahead of the cow herd.
And it doesn't bother me as long as the mothers are maintaining weight.
I don't want them to lose weight, but they haven't been.
But then also in the fall, the guy I buy or I sell the calves to, he's done silage corn
and I never have before.
So I actually did plant some corn thinking that I didn't sile it to help mix in with my
feed.
But as we got to the point, I don't have any silage equipment.
So I was going to have to hire somebody to come in and chop it for me and haul it in.
I could pack it.
And then, you know, I'd have the expense of hauling it back out to them to just the same
feeding scenario.
And my wife, Stephanie, she was saying, well, we have collars.
We can manage how much they get.
Why don't we just graze the corn instead of ensiling?
So we tried that two years ago and it was December 17th.
We did have snow, you know, when I started grazing that corn.
So I'd extended my grazing season a little bit with everything else.
And then come December 17th, instead of having to feed cows hay, you know, I turned them in
on that silage corn that was standing.
The ear was there.
Everything was there.
So I was able to graze for a month on 40 acres of silage corn without feeding any hay.
And I typically wean my calves between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And then I don't sell till after the first of the year.
And so I was going to wean my calves.
But then I decided, well, why do I want to feed my calves in the yard in the corral and
have the manure build up and have to go put out straw for them instead of just leaving them
on their mothers?
So I just left them on their mothers grazing.
And again, the calves were able to kind of wander through the corn, but it didn't bother
anything.
There was still plenty of feed for the cows.
And so, you know, I grazed for a month.
I grazed till the 10th of January.
I pulled everybody into the corral.
I pulled my calves off and the corrals adjacent to this field where I had them anyways.
So I pulled the calves in the yard, sent the cows back out to graze for another week while
the calves were being weaned.
And they're close by.
They could touch noses, whatever they wanted.
And so it really worked out really well.
And so typically up to this point, you know, through grazing with the electric fence wire around
the pivots, eight acres, you know, at a time down to two acres at a time.
The first initial three to five years, I was consistently 550 pound weaning weights.
The year prior to this, I was up to 640 pounds on the same nine month calf.
And I thought, well, that's great.
You know, increase money for me.
And then after doing this corn, you know, in addition to all the cover cropping and alfalfa
that I'd been grazing, I was at 740 pounds.
And so that's what got us talking, you know, how does that happen?
How's what's causing that?
And this last year, winter 2025, 2026, I was planting some corn, but I got it in late.
And then I had a flock of geese come in and they just wiped out all my corn.
So I didn't have any.
But the neighbor to the north of me had planted some corn for grain.
And so after he cut it, he allowed me to go in and graze off his corn fodder.
And so this year they were they were still in there about 23 days, 24 days.
It was a smaller fill.
And so I managed again what I gave the cows per day.
I turned them in actually on Christmas Eve and I pulled them out on the 17th of December
or January again there.
And this year, my calves, they weren't at 740, but they were at 677.
So I was still well over 100 pounds above what my previous average had been.
So, you know, prior to say 2023 at 550 pounds, if I just use 50 calves, you know, I'll try
to use round numbers.
I won't use 100, but I'll use 50 calves at $2.50 a pound.
You know, that's like $68,000 in calves.
In 2026, you know, that same 50 head, I'll use 650 pounds instead of 677 or 640, you know,
100 pounds increase on those calves.
The same 250, not the 350 that it is, that would be $81,000.
So that was an increase of $12,500 without changing anything other than grazing practices.
And that's just one year.
So to pay for your collars.
Yeah.
It's kind of a no brainer.
Yeah.
And then you take the couple of years prior to that, increasing the grazing season by a
month, you know, feeding one to two ton of hay per day.
You know, my initial 2023 numbers, I had an increased herd.
I was over 100 head.
I was feeding two ton of hay per day.
And so an extra month of grazing saved me 60 ton of hay at 250 a ton.
There was $15,000 right there.
So you take $15,000 saving in hay, $12,000 increase in weights on the calves, the $6,000
on bell grazing in the winter.
Now that I guess 6,000 that included a little bit of hay the first time, you know, 1700 bucks,
thousand bucks on the tractor.
You know, that all starts to add up to where these collars are paying for themselves versus
a physical hardwire that is an expense that just sits out there.
And that's what it does.
So did you use a poly wire and then before?
Because I know a lot of guys that do more of your intense grazing, they will just do poly
wires, which is very inexpensive, very quick.
So really, what's the benefit if you did that versus virtual outside of the labor of not having
to go out there, move your wires, put up new fencing?
Yeah, I never got into poly.
I mean, we've had a 14 gauge galvanized electric fence wire is what we've always used.
And that's what I had at my pivot points.
I made some wire spools out of some double discs off my drill that I had replaced.
And so I just mounted one on each of the corners of the pivots and I would string it out.
And then I'd wind it up in the fall.
I did wind it up every time I moved them so the pivot could go around initially.
That just took more time.
So then I got to where I just dropped it where the pivot ran over and let it go.
And then I'd raise it back up.
Initially, it was just it took time to go out there every day and move it.
And not a lot of time, but it did take some time.
You know that in the spring when I'm calving, I'm trying to get crops in.
I'm trying to get, you know, some of it was flood irrigated versus pivot.
I'm getting streams of water going on alfalfa.
There's plenty of things that I got to do.
You know, if I can find some time savings somewhere, it's just a benefit.
Well, you don't have to check fences.
Even your wire fence, you don't have to check.
You know, like our neighbors were over checking our fences and we had several of them that they've had to fix or tighten or whatever.
You know, you're not always having to do that before you move cattle in either.
Yeah, and I actually up on our drive farm, you know, we get a lot heavier snow, a lot of drifting.
Fences get taken straight to the ground.
I haven't fixed my fence in three years.
So there may not be a fence left to fix if I ever need to again, but I don't foresee that happening.
So can you talk about too, when we visited, you were talking about how this helps you move cattle.
Yeah.
So on the farm that I rented, I looked at putting the physical wire on.
It's got two irrigation canals that run through it.
It's not far.
It's just a mile down the road.
And so, you know, I kind of found out before this, because where that silage corn was under the pivot, there's another pivot to the south where the cows were grazing.
And I needed to sort the animals to take part of them up to my dry land.
And so what I did is I just created kind of a tunnel that a virtual boundary that led from the south pivot around the edge of the cornfield to my corral.
And what I found is as long as I wasn't pushing the cows, trying to run them, get them there, if I just let them walk slowly, interact with the audible tones, I moved the whole herd of cows around the cornfield by myself.
No cattle dogs, just me.
I was actually walking in front of them, calling them.
I wasn't behind them pushing them.
So they were just following me.
They'd hear the audible tones and they'd keep moving.
Not one cow got in the corn crop.
And there was no physical wire keeping them around.
It was just the virtual boundary and the audible tones and the shocks.
I don't remember if anybody got shocked, but nobody got into the corn.
I got the whole herd to the corral myself, was able to do my sorting.
And then going down to this other farm, you know, there is a physical wire on one side.
A neighbor's got a pasture that he's got cows in that's got wire.
And the other side's just an irrigation ditch and an open grain field.
And so I've got to where I'll create a tunnel going down to that farm to help just move.
You know, I don't have a cow trying to go out in somebody else's field or something that they'll just move them down.
And so once they're there, I'll graze typically from the north end of the farm, miles south to the south end quickly, and then come back to the north.
So I can road them home when I'm done.
And in that process, they've got to cross two irrigation canals.
And the calves at this point, that's kind of the first time they come across a body of water that I'm trying to push them through.
And it used to be six or seven of us trying to herd the calves, push them through the canal, to cross the canal, to get back with their mothers into the next pasture that I want them to graze.
Usually that one had been in an alfalfa field, so grazing the alfalfa field.
And sometimes, you know, you get the calf right next to the edge of the water, but then they don't want to go in.
So I'll run up and try to push it into the water to try and get it going.
And I've been kicked in the chest before.
They'll bolt and go somewhere else.
And it's a whole rodeo for four hours trying to get them across.
And so with this, I mean, I dropped the electric fence wire that's around on the edge of the canal bank, keeping the calves in.
I'll drop that. And then I moved the mother cow's virtual boundary to go across the canal.
And I called them and they're used to it. They knew.
And then I just left and I sat on the bridge to the canal quarter mile away and just watched.
And so the whole cow herd, they went, they crossed the canal, they got in the pasture.
Some of the calves went with them.
And then some of the calves, they were grazing a half mile to the north.
And within 10 minutes, they had noticed that the cows had moved.
They ran down, got to the edge of the canal, saw everybody was there.
I wasn't there trying to force them through it.
They went through the canal themselves.
I got back home with mom.
I went down, I raised up the electric fence wire and I was done.
10 minutes later, the whole herd, calves, everybody included, they were moved into the new pasture where I wanted.
Versus six or seven guys, four hours, getting everybody excited.
You know, I just did their thing.
So now you have to add to your spreadsheet.
You don't have to buy beer for those seven guys.
You didn't have a hospital visit.
You didn't.
Well, none of us drink.
So that, that, that helps.
It's usually a bag of candy or some ice cream is usually what it is.
Some guys need to figure in the beer.
Yeah.
So are there, I don't think I have any other questions outside of what have you seen as a negative?
A drawback or maybe a problem or something that people kind of have to work around?
I don't know that I've seen a negative and my wife, Stephanie, she could tell you just the moving the calves.
Cause she's usually one of those seven people down trying to help push them through the canal.
She's like, these things are the best things ever because she doesn't have to be involved in moving them.
It's hard to think of a real downside to them.
Everything's been positive since we've been doing them.
It is technology.
There are times that I've had, and this was earlier on, you know, through kind of our testing process
versus now that they've, they've updated some hardware and things, you know, where the cell signal would get hung up and it wouldn't, the colors wouldn't update.
So we'd have to cycle the power on them.
And the only way to do that was to pull the battery out and put it back in.
Then they added the feature to cycle power over Bluetooth, which helped.
But lately I haven't even had to worry about doing that.
What I'm hearing is they're very good at fixing problems and listening to you guys on,
Hey, these are the issues we're having and we're going to get those fixed quickly.
We're not going to just,
be outdated.
Yeah.
No offense has been great to work with.
You know, initially we were kind of wondering because support was in Norway.
You know, they are eight, nine hours difference.
But usually if I saw an issue and I emailed them an afternoon, they were off.
But time I got up the next morning, I usually had an email response back and having me try something
or looking into it or whatever or saying,
Yeah, this collar is defective.
We'll send you a new one.
They have been great to work with.
The company's been great to work with.
Yeah, I can't speak too much for the other companies because I haven't dealt with them.
I've heard as they've gone through some ownership changes that customer support's been a little bit of a struggle for some of them.
But my experience with no offense is that they've been great.
Somebody online said that they got a grant for theirs and that was in Oklahoma.
And so I am talking to another person as well and wanting to kind of get an idea about the other ones.
But are you familiar with grants for these to help pay for them?
Yeah, and here in Idaho, they did have a water quality grant through the Conservation Commission that I actually used and helped on getting my collars because it is a purchase.
You know, I was purchasing these collars.
That's going to vary state to state on how that is looked at.
And right now, our legislature here in Idaho for this coming year, they didn't apportion any money to that grant program.
But as it's come along the last couple of years, the USDA through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, their program, their EQUIP program, they have come to where they've got some money to put towards virtual fencing collars as well.
And it's an application process.
You know, you have to fill out an application, then you get ranked to see if you get awarded a grant or not.
But yeah, they're actually, as I've been to some soil health forums and other workshops here locally, there are some not-for-profits that have money that are looking at helping people.
So yeah, there's people and organizations willing to help out to do this.
So that definitely helps the rancher out a lot too.
And I think my final question is, because I don't love the government,
none of this is being reported about CO2 coming off of animals.
Is your information private with no offense?
Like they're not selling your information, telling anybody how many cows you have?
Yeah, no, as far as I know, there's no reporting going on anywhere to any governments or anything.
It's a privately held company.
They've got your best interests in mind that they're not trying to give off your information.
These aren't tracking CO2 or anything.
It's just strictly animal containment.
They are working on advanced features and stuff.
I'll be a part of some of that here in the near future, that they'll have more features available through the collars.
And there's other companies as well, you know, Halter and Gallagher, that they've got other things that the app, the information will tell you and stuff.
But I don't believe it's going anywhere.
So no offense has never sold out to anybody else.
There's not the same owners because that's when typically stuff starts to happen is when they sell out and then they get information.
And now we've lost our information.
And there's just a lot of stuff going on in Canada with cattle regulations.
And so on the U.S. side of it, if that information stays private, I would imagine people would want to make sure.
You know, and the only other thing that I have, I am a partner now with NoFence.
You know, I'm not a NoFence employee.
I was going to ask.
If somebody needs...
We've had people ask on Facebook all the time, is there a discount code that we can get?
And so, you know, I don't have a problem sharing that code.
It'll give them 10% off at any time.
And they haven't done it on the sheep and goat collars, but NoFence themselves has done a couple of times that they'll throw a 20% off discount.
You know, last year, right before 4th of July, they had a 20% off discount.
And so as far as I know, things have been able to stack.
So that does lead to some cost savings.
My code is Tyson.
I believe it's a capital T-Y-S-O-N.
Graze, capital G-R-A-Z-E.
And then the number 10, Tyson Graze 10.
That'll give anybody 10% off of a cattle collar or a goat and sheep collar if they're looking to purchase.
So is it a capital G as well then?
I believe it's capital G.
Let me double check.
You might have to.
Well, if it's not, they can just type it in multiple times, right?
Yeah.
I mean, go ahead and check.
So that'll save them 10%.
And then are you willing to give out your information if people have questions?
Or would you prefer them to go to NoFence for those questions?
No, I'm totally fine giving that out.
Yeah, it is capital T, capital G for Tyson Graze.
And then just the number 10.
There's a spot as they go through the page to purchase the collars that they can input the discount.
And they can input that in.
And if they're buying more than 100 collars, you know, right there, they've got a button to click to, you know, have a NoFence representative.
And then they'll get back to them with what the volume pricing would be for over 100 collars.
But my 10% discount still works on top of what that volume pricing would be.
Okay.
So how do you want them to get a hold of you with questions?
So if they want to get a hold of us with questions, I don't care on email.
I would not give everybody your phone number.
Because you'll never hear you got work to do.
But email or something?
My email is tkoles.
So my first letter T, my last name, Koles.
C-O-L-E-S.
Farm.
Singular.
At gmail.com.
Okay, we'll put that in the show notes too, along with your Tyson Graze 10 code.
But it's tkoles, C-O-L-E-S, farm at gmail.com.
Well, thank you for giving us an over an hour of your time.
Yeah, it might be a longer podcast.
Yeah, it is going to be a longer podcast.
But it's super frustrating to me when I try to find out information on a podcast and they limit it to 20 minutes.
I'm like, yeah, that didn't do me any good.
So I wanted to make sure we got through all the questions.
I didn't care how much time it took.
So this was awesome.
Yeah, thank you, Mary Jo.
I'm glad you had me on.
Yeah, you're welcome.
All right.
Well, you guys, if you know the routine, comments, questions, concerns, email me at maryjoe at withoutthebank.com.
I'm happy to answer those.
You can finance these callers through your policies.
So if you want to make more money on the caller, put it in the policy first.
Borrow the money.
You have uninterrupted compound interest forever on there.
And then you can pay it back.
When you have higher weaning weights, when you save money on fuel, all the things Tyson just told us about.
So let me know if you need us.
Otherwise, we'll see you in the next podcast.
Have a great day.
Thanks for listening to the Farming Without the Bank podcast.
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