Technology that may soon be available to South Australian farmers has had dramatic business and lifestyle impacts for leading New Zealand dairy farmer Peter Morgan, who presented to South East farmers at the DairySA Innovation Day in June.
Mr Morgan has been using virtual fencing system Halter for three-and-a-half years, and while legislation is not in place for it to be used in SA yet, he explained some of the benefits farmers could expect to gain if or when it does become available.
Running the 265-hectare Moorlands dairy farm in the Waikato region on NZ's North Island with wife Ann Bouma, Mr Morgan said virtual fencing had helped them cut staff hours to more manageable levels, increase pasture utilisation, and shift herds remotely benefitting cow health and stress levels.
The farm is home to a 630-head crossbred herd and has an annual average rainfall of 1100 to 1200 millimetres.
They sell milk into domestic markets, with about 60 per cent sold to a2 buyers.
Mr Morgan said they had a reasonably simple system where pasture growth was king - they only import 1-2pc of feed.
"It's all about pasture - the pasture I grow and grow well is my primary input and it drives everything else in terms of outputs," he said.
"My ability to look after my business is primarily linked to my ability to manage the main resource, which is pasture."
With that in mind, Mr Morgan became one of the first farmers in the country to use Halter technology.
He has a high bar for what technology he uses on farm and has tried several iterations of the Halter collar, but said the final version had unlocked more productive and sustainable farming, with significant workload and lifestyle benefits.
The Morgans have three staff who can use the associated app to draw pasture breaks, manage multiple herds without human interaction and keep a constant eye on cow activity.
The cows respond to sound and vibration cues from the collar, learning to recognise and remain within virtual fences.
"We get the cows to do what we'd like them to do," Mr Morgan said.
"They go to where we want, they have the break that we want, they move to the next paddock, they come to the cow shed on time and leave to the paddock where they need be.
"The cows also tell us what's going on, how they feel and what's happening reproductively."
Users have no control over the strength of signals, eliminating the potential for animal mistreatment.
The enterprise has removed 60pc of its internal fences, and reduced staff hours from an average of 58 a week to 44.
"Despite the time saved, our team actually spend more time with the cows and pasture than they used to because they're out there making high-quality decisions, thinking about where cows are flowing, where the trough is, where the shelter is, what the weather forecast is, instead of just splitting a paddock in half and not having time to understand why," Mr Morgan said.
Mr Morgan said they had also dramatically cut back on their use of supplements, because they had improved pasture utilisation so much.
He used to think he was a great pasture manager because he walked the farm every week and had a rotational grazing system.
"As challenges came along, like labour, we started to realise it wasn't that easy," he said.
The couple, who used to regularly put in 80 to 90 hours a week of work, said they're working arrangement was now completely flexible and their staff were able to manage their herds completely independently.
"While we've got dynamic plans around rainstorms and when the river floods, they can manage the day-to-day completely transparently," Mr Morgan said.
"They can set it so in the middle of the night the cows quietly move away from a wet paddock and in the scorching summers they design breaks to suit what the animals need.
"I have a map in my head of the farm in my head and what needs to be done and every farmer I know is the same. What Halter has done has mimicked how we experience the land (in their app).
"We'd usually run three herds in the winter time and I've got 11 now - where I want, how I want.
"As the sun rises, every single mob quietly moves to their new break and we watch them, then we go around each mob, check them, and feed out completely independently.
"Three and a half years we've been collared and we've had 2500-3000 odd moves of cows and not one of them by humans."
