Virtual Fence Could Modernize the Old West

Hugh Pickens writes "For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. Now, animal science researchers with the Department of Agriculture are working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer. A video of Dean Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, NM., shows how he has built radios that attach to an animal's head that allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to. Anderson says it would cost $900 today to put a radio device on one head of cattle, but he says costs will fall and the entire herd wouldn't have to be outfitted, just the 'leaders.' Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow."

Comments

Re-adapted Tech

[slifox]

"working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer"

Looks like they're finally re-adapting that technology once reserved only for our most esteemed government leaders ;)

The animal trials usually come before the human trials -- but I don't know if I'd consider any of our current heads of state still "human" ...

This sounds laughably impractical

[elrous0]

I used to work with cattle on my uncle's farm when I was a kid. They are dumb animals. They do dumb things. Anytime you try to move them, they do all kinds of stupid shit. I've seen them get "trapped" in fencing, in ditches, even in bushes and trees. So, here we have a system, which costs $900 for every cow it's put on (and that "just put it on the leaders" line sounds like wishful thinking to me). If it has some sort of mechanical malfunction or loses signal in some mountain pass, you could lose a lot of cattle. If you move the cattle and some of them get trapped in a ditch/underbursh/etc., you could lose a lot of cattle (since no actual person will be there to see it and help them). And if the cows simply ignore or get confused by the signal you're sending them, you could lose a lot of cattle. And every cow lost is a lot of money lost.

Basically, this seems to me like a very high tech, expensive way to so something that's much more effectively and economically done the old-fashioned way. Ranch-hands are relatively cheap, smart, and effective. And handful of good cowboys can move a surprisingly large herd.

This new system, by contrast, sounds unreliable, dumb, and VERY expensive. When you're talking huge herds, $900 a head is a LOT of money. Even $900 a "leader" is a LOT of money. Certainly, its tracking function would be useful to keep an eye on the herd (but I think they already have those sorts of systems already). But the idea that you can move cattle remotely with the push of a button, with no actual cowboys on hand, seems to me like the dream of someone who has never actually worked with the smelly, stupid things.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[magarity]

You've taken it way too seriously - in reality, the whole 'cattle herd' thing is an allegory for political parties. Read it again and it'll make sense this time.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[eldavojohn]

Uh, as someone forced to labor around these animals, I second your dubiousness. I have stared into the void that is the eye of a bovine creature and the void also stared back.

From trying to help one get untangled from a barbed wire fence to watching one fry itself on an electrified fence to watching one stare confoundedly as a vehicle killed it at 55 mph to ... did I mention you can't lead them down a set of stairs?

Well, now stealing the cattle is not only going to be easier but there's going to be bonus cattle where not only do you get the $800-$1000 a head but you also get a $900 device!

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[morgan_greywolf]

Perhaps. But you sound like a whole lot of people whose jobs have since been replaced by automation.

Seriously.

For example, it was once said that vinyl-cutting CAD/CAM systems would never replace the journeyman sign painter (yes, signs used to be painted by hand!). You could NEVER do all the stuff that a guy with a brush and some paint could do.

Yet, today, you pretty much can. There are very few people left who actually know how to layout and paint a sign by hand like an old pro. Most sign companies don't even have a hand lettering person on staff anymore.

This might be in its infancy, but it is possible -- even likely -- that one day, something along these lines might actually be made to work well enough to replace experienced ranch hands.

If a rancher can even eliminate the need for 1 or 2 ranch hands with this technology, in the long-run, he'll save himself a bundle of money.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

I wonder if all the breeding that was done to get the best cuts of meat didn't bother to check if the offspring were dumber than their predecessors.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[elrous0]

I'm not saying it's impossible for a system to one day replace cowboys, just that *this* almost certainly isn't that system. Some things are not only hard to automate, but largely impractical (which is why farmers still hire humans for such tasks as fruit-picking, harvesting lettuce, etc. even though it should be theoretically possible to automate the process).

And if you think ranch-hands make a huge "bundle of money" compared to what it would cost to outfit and maintain a herd full of transmitters at $900 a head, you are WAY out of touch with how much ranch-hands make.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[cayenne8]

Great...so now..instead of cattle rustlers, you're gonna have cattle hackers???

Man..that is seriously going to fuck with good western movies from now on. How do you string up the rustler/hacker when the bad guy is in Russia, and you're in TX somewhere?

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[morgan_greywolf]

And if you think ranch-hands make a huge "bundle of money" compared to what it would cost to outfit and maintain a herd full of transmitters at $900 a head, you are WAY out of touch with how much ranch-hands make.

Notice I said "in the long run". At first, a rancher might start with outfitting the 'leaders' amd try the tech out. Or they might try it on some small herd on a contained plot of land, or something like that. I don't know much about ranching, honestly. But what I am saying is that that's kind of how things got started in the sign industry -- the CAD/CAM systems that came out at first really couldn't replace a sign painter. And they were expensive. It cost the annual salary of like 3-4 journeyman sign painters just to buy one machine.

But as the tech got better and economies of scale kicked in, you can by a machine complete with software that can power a small sign shop run by a single person for about a couple of grand. Less if you buy used.

So they'd start out with little projects here and there, and slowly but surely everything got automated more and more and more. To the point that these days, there are no more sign painters.

Sign painters figured they'd never get replaced by automation because they had a skill, and there was no way to automate that.

But I'm telling you, even if it isn't *this* tech, a radio-powered *something*, probably combined with other tech, will likely be used to herd cattle around someday.

So people going around emphatically denying that this profession or that profession is 'safe' from automation are most likely wrong, in the grand scheme of things.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[zappepcs]

While your reasoning seems sound, it fails in real life. I have worked in the telcomms industry for some time and have personally witnessed the use of pagers in waterproof wrappings, taped to a collar around a couple of cows, for the express purpose of telling them when it is milking time. Inside of 2 weeks the cows were reliably answering the pager call. Given the right motivation, even dumb cows can be convinced to do the 'right thing' most of the time. Using some technology to reduce the amount of manpower required to convince them is nothing but good.

Pagers, BTW, would not cost $900 per cow, and empirical evidence suggests that only the lead cows really need the pager around their necks.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[Swizec]

The only professions safe from automation are programming and different kinds of designing. At least until we get creative computers, but that's not very likely in the foreseeable future.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[ijakings]

Like all hacker movies, invent some tech that would make absolutely no sense even if it were possible throw in alot of buzzwords about TCP encryption and some stuff your just making up.

Sounds like a winner to me.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[RMH101]

Yes, those we outsource instead.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[camelrider]

I don't see a lot of cattle since I moved to Alaska, but years ago I grew up among a lot of them. Dairy cattle fifty years ago surely didn't need a pager to tell them when to come in to be milked! They were there without fail twice a day, most of them even entering the barn and poking their heads into their accustomed stantion.

If an individual didn't show up on time, you'd better go find what's the matter with her.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[Anonymous Coward]

I have stared into the void that is the eye of a bovine creature and the void also stared back.

That sounds like my last trip to McDonalds. It's bovines serving bovines to bovines. Bovines all the way down.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[mysticgoat]

Please re-read the the posts you are responding to and pay attention to the content.

Persons with expertise on the ground in handling cattle are saying that moving the herd is only one component of the job, and one of the less difficult components, at that. Protecting the animals from external threats and from their internal inabilities to cope with common environmental traps are economic necessities.

Until there is a remote way of intervening when a cow worth several hundred dollars gets itself crosswise to a barbed wire fence, being able to remotely direct the herd offers no benefits. These parts of the job will require a sophisticated all terrain robot capable of identifying a cow in trouble, immobilizing the large animal without hurting it, cutting and repairing barbed wire, delivering an antitetanus jab, and so on. And then you might as well save a bunch of money on the cowhead radio receivers by just putting a loudspeaker system in the robot.

Yeah, at some point technology might replace the cowboy and his horse, but radiohead cows are not going to do it. And robotics has a long ways to go before a person who knows how to safely immobilize a ton of living hamburger with a few feet of rope is in danger of losing his job.

To put this in perspective: a little before Fulton figured out how to make a steam engine small enough to fit inside a boat, there were some persons that history has forgotten who were experimenting with steam powered bicycles. Radiohead cows sound an awful lot like steam powered bicycles. The developers might be shooting their arrows more or less in the right direction, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any actual target anywhere near where their arrows are going.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[dilvish_the_damned]

did I mention you can't lead them down a set of stairs?

If I had a dime for every time I hid a cow in my bedroom...

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[Fishead]

I think part of the problem isn't just the dumb cow (we had a hobby farm when I was a kid), it is the rugged terrain.

If you REALLY wanted to automate your cattle herding process, a good first step would be to flatten your land. Take out all those dangerous canyons, trees, fallen logs, boulders, and gopher holes. If your acreage is in Saskatchewan, most of the work is done for you if it is in the Peace River BC area, a bit more work. Here you might want to employ an army of robots with shovels and dynamite.

I say just hire a couple mexicans. Trying to automate everything is stupid. And yes, I am an automation technician presently building an automated mouse trap in my basement.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[zappepcs]

Just as a note, the dairyman that I had to deal with wanted to mod the pager for louder beeps and longer battery life. He had enough cows to overwhelm his milking barn and took them in turns from different fields. The pagers made a huge difference for him. We did the mods - encased it in a 'waterproof' project case, ran battery and speaker connections external from the pager, and all was good. He got about 1 month battery life and effective management of the cows at milking time. I extended my trip to watch the cows come in for milking several times. One of the many odd stories I've collected over the years.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[ari_j]

The thing is that full-time ranch hands are not needed at most normal-size ranches. Where I grew up, it worked more like this. You need to round up your cattle about twice a year (branding and slaughter). This can be accomplished with four to ten people, depending on the terrain and size of your pastures. You also have to actually do the branding (which includes neutering, dehorning, etc.), once a year. You have several neighboring ranches, all of which also need to do round-up about twice a year and branding one time a year. Their days don't have to coincide with yours. So what you do is help each other out, exchanging labor for labor.

I don't see this technology being remotely economically viable for quite some time. That doesn't mean I am opposed to people developing it on their own dime, though.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[kat_skan]

Personally I think it's worth sacrificing that old trope in exchange for the possibility that any mall anywhere in America could spontaneously be invaded by radio-controlled cows.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[Hurricane78]

for the possibility that any mall anywhere in America could spontaneously be invaded by radio-controlled cows.

Possibility?

I see that every day, ...here at Walmart.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[hairyfeet]

The problem is the modern cow has been bred strictly for size,which just boosts the stupid by a factor of ten. As for cows themselves they really didn't use to be THAT stupid. When I was a kid I use to help my neighbor check on and feed his small herd of milkers along with his bull,and when I'd hope the fence along with my friends who had never come with me they would freeze and look like they were going to shit themselves. When I would ask what was wrong they say "Bull....BIG Bull....BIG horned Bull!" and I would of course try to keep from laughing at them. I'd go "Hey Petey,who's a big ole feller? Who wants his ears scratched?" and old Pete would come a trotting along and start mooing wanting his ears scratched.He and the whole herd were just like big oversized dogs.

So you see,they didn't always used to be so damned stupid,the stupid is strictly a man made add on. Just like all the dogs they breed for looks are much stupider than your garden variety mutt,so have cows become giant morons. Sadly I read recently that nearly all the "old stock" breeds are nearly extinct thanks to western overbred cattle being brought in to maximize meat production. I just hope their is an animal equivalent to the seed bank otherwise one good new cattle disease could wipe them off the face of the earth.

Re:This sounds laughably impractical

[Deagol]

As someone who's owned family milk cows, I say you're being a tad harsh. Our cows were not only personable, but exhibited downright devious behavior. They learn quickly. They'll follow verbal commands. They recognize specific people and respond to their preferences to those people. Granted, they were both Jersey cows, which have a reputation for being a bit more clever than the average Holstein (and I would assume the typical Angus or Hereford that I see being run around my neck of the Utah open range).

Sure, cows are big clumsy animals, both by nature and due to breeding. But they're certainly not totally devoid of presence and thought, as you seem to imply. I didn't just labor near these animals, but I hand milked them daily. People who have hand-milked animals like cows and goats know there is a bond formed between them and the animal. They know full well that they could kill you in an instant, yet they recognize the give-and-take relationship they're part of.

As for the stairs... cows have little to no depth perception. That's why you can paint cattle guards across a road and it'll be as effective as a real cattle guard. They're not dumb, but self-serving. You of all people should know this. Bovines are known to be more sure-footed than horses, which are skittish creatures bordering on neurotic. They simply won't put their feet down where they're uncertain of the consequences (except when they're in a panic). That's why oxen are preferred as beasts of burden over horses, at least in countries where people aren't too proud to have cattle perform such work.

Still, I think that this idea is rather dumb. People who range cattle here in the West aren't making a killing as it is, and devices like these solve a problem that doesn't exist, in a very expensive way. Cheap radio beacons for tracking down cattle that have been ranging in the wooded mountains for the summer? Maybe. Probably not. But remote controlling cattle is something only a foolish marketing drone would come up with.

Rustlin'

[halcyon1234]

So what happens when a posse of rustlers comes along with a roll of tin foil?

Re:Rustlin'

[Idiomatick]

You are right, we should be mounting laser cannons on them.

Re:Rustlin'

[Yvan256]

The last thing we need is land sharks.

Does this work on congressmen/senators?

[andy1307]

We need something like this for our congresscritters so we can whisper commands into their ears..you know, like "Don't vote for the bailout".

Suddenly

[Technopaladin]

All these Bluetooth wearing peoples existence becomes clear...they were the prototype for Cattle management. Truly the work has flipped upside down. I would love to see Rattlesnake, Bee, growling pumped into those things while people cruised around.

Take me to your leaders

[snspdaarf]

I got a laugh from "Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow." I have also worked around cows in the family beef operation, and all one has to do to identify the "leaders" is watch the cows.

Intelligence of cows

[Ed Avis]

How much bovine stupidity can be attributed to human preferences? Have we bred cattle to make them more stupid? I'm sure wild bison and buffaloes are a lot sharper. I expect it's our fault; when did you last send back a steak in a restaurant because it wasn't intelligent enough?

Re:Intelligence of cows

[Arthur Grumbine]

I'm sure wild bison and buffaloes are a lot sharper.

Citation desperately needed.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[superbondbond]

I'm not so sure wild bison were any smarter. Read about the historic buffalo jumps that the native Americans used in hunting...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump

Re:Intelligence of cows

[Arthur B.]

I don't even think they were bred for stupidity, it's just that they were bred with no preference for stupidity or intelligence, it's irrelevant to reproductive success. The rest is just natural genetic drift.

I'm looking at you, humanity.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[dilvish_the_damned]

You need a citation to back up the claim that he is sure?

Re:Intelligence of cows

[ari_j]

Actually, we breed them to be docile. Extreme docility and stupidity seem to go hand in hand. I would venture that 100% of the delta-stupidity of a cow beyond that of a similar wild animal (perhaps a bison or a wild boar) can be attributed to human preferences.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[mr_mischief]

There was a time when intelligence of human children and more so of their parents weighed heavily in humans reaching reproductive age. Then we became civilized enough and technologically assisted enough that it makes very little difference.

Of course, being mostly geeks, we probably don't want to go back to when keen natural eyesight, strong muscles, fast nerves, muscle coordination, and agreeable stomachs also weighed heavily in survival.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[lysergic.acid]

i'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. if you panic a large crowd of people by say, threatening their life, you could herd them towards a cliff too. such tactics have been used in many historic battles to corner enemy troops. it's probably one of the more obvious tactics for using terrain to your advantage.

when a large group of individuals/herd of bison/whatever are running from danger, they tend to move as a single mass. this may be an evolutionarily learned trait since in the wild, if a predator is chasing a herd, the animal that is separated from the heard is singled out. aside from protection in numbers, this strategy also allows the mature animals to form a protective wall around the more vulnerable young, so this is a good defense usually.

but large groups of panicked animals, and this includes humans, can be easily herded by a smaller group of coordinated attackers. and once you have a stampede effect where individuals are bunched together, then the individuals at the back are simply following the stampede and cannot see what's ahead, and by the time the individuals at the front can see that there's a cliff they can't stop and simply get pushed over the cliff by the individuals behind them.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[PitaBred]

Speak for yourself, weakling :P All kidding aside, there's no reason a geek shouldn't at least be moderately fit. It's as easy as parking far out in the parking lot instead of right next to the door, and ordering a nice sandwich with veggies and such on it instead of pizza.

Athleticism isn't purely genetic... it takes practice and work, just like every other skill.

Re:Intelligence of cows

[rrohbeck]

Amen.

Remember the old quote (I think it's from Arnold himself): Being in shape is 60% nutrition, 30% exercise and 10% genetics.

You forgot to mention soda. It's the #1 reason for geeks (and everybody else) to be fat and unhealthy.

Screw Halo 3...

[PinkyDead]

I wanna play World of Warcow.

Mooooo

[VincenzoRomano]

Moooo!
- Please, come back to the stable!
Moooo!
- OK, you force me to use brute force!
Moooo ... bzzzzzz ... MOOOOOO!
- I told you!

No!

[Camaro]

I work with cattle for a living, both my own and helping neighbors. I see it over and over. There are definitely leaders in a herd but there are also cattle that will not follow unless you get behind them and get them moving in the right direction. Maybe there's a slow one who stepped in a hole yesterday. Maybe the calf has picked that moment to get a snack and the mother stops for it to suck. Or it's the nervous cow that heads for the hills at the first sign of a roundup. Hell, there's even leader cows who decide to go different directions. Cattle like routine and if they don't usually go a certain direction they don't really feel like going there. Many times I've had a herd approach an open gate and stop. After a few minutes of trying to get them to go through they scatter. But often the first place they head when I start trying to round them up is where they go to drink water because it's what they do every day.

docility

[zogger]

They are bred for docility and for large and fast weight gain and huge milk production. Docility is number one though, you can't do squat with a really wild cow (total range cows excluded, they are all mostly wild) I have an eastern perspective on this, and a small herd that are traditional barbed wire fenced in. I have one now, pretty wild and suspicious, takes me forever to lure it into the barn/corral in order to deal with it, like de worming, etc.. The rest, tame enough, come when they are called-literally, I just yell at them to come on in. I make a point every new calf to go up to them and rub them a lot and get them to smell me and be around me for the first week, momma willing of course, most put up with it because we get along OK, and it works, they get and stay at least half tame-to me anyway, not to anyone else around here. Dairy cows I have worked with, about as tame as puppies, most of them anyway, because they are handled daily and want to be milked, they line up for it. As to smarts a big variable there, I've seen some pretty sharp ones then some walking vegetables, the majority are in between. Lot of folks around the world still use oxen for working, singly or in teams, they tame up and are smart enough to be reliable enough for that sort of thing. I was going to do that myself, but haven't had a good set of bull twins yet.

HEY! Already thought of this!

[CCTalbert]

So funny, a friend and I were bouncing emails back and forth over the use of small GPS chips after seeing an article on GPS enabled pet collars. The Desire to Profit was in mind... we envisioned a cool web site with all sorts of interesting images of cattle being manipulated by cool technology,etc. Anyway, my joke/rant from 2003:

The Digital Ranch(tm)

"Wireless Ranch(tm)"... (Web site and hardware in development, pricing to be announced)

So, you have your herd of cattle, bison, horses, sheep, whatever- you implant one "Ranchhand(tm)" chip in each, and then you can monitor all your ranch assets via your computer. Each chip monitors all of the animals vital statistics, as well as it's location, and reports them to you via wireless networking. So you can pull up a real-time display of your herd at any time, pick out individual animals and check on their health, see where they've been, set watch points on health and be notified if anything goes out of bounds. Of course, all this ties into "Ranch Database(tm)" that you use to track the health and progress of each animal through it's life cycle.

Each animal can also be fitted with the optional "Drover(tm)" module, which provides audible signals to the animal (backed up with a mild to severe electric shock) to modify the animals behavior. As the animal approaches the perimeter of the area you have defined as available to it, it receives a pleasant "chirp" warning it not to proceed, followed by a mild shock if it doesn't comply. Fences and the cost of their maintenance become a thing of the past! When it's time to move the herd to another pasture, to the barn, etc., the "Wireless Ranch" software module will send the appropriate signals to gather your assets together and herd them to where they need to be. Individual animals can be separated and directed as needed for grooming, health maintenance, harvesting, etc.

Feeding chores become more efficient with the "Smart-Trough(tm)". Using the "Drover(tm)" module, animals can be guided to specific feeding receptacles, so supplements and medications can be automatically dispensed to specific animals. Using the optional pressure mat at each feeding trough allows you to automatically weigh each animal. With the "Ranch Vet(tm)" health monitoring software the need for supplements and medications can be automatically assessed and dispensed!

Docile healthy animals, with less effort than ever before- the "Wireless Ranch(tm)" is your ticket to a more efficient and profitable ranch than ever before!