Virtual fencing research finds 'no alarms' as cows learn technology quickly

However, Dr Megan Verdon, who is a TIA senior research fellow, said the cows spent less time grazing when using Halter technology, which Yolla farmer Duncan Macdonald has installed on his farms and provides farmers with the option of using sound cues to keep cattle in a particular paddock.

Dr Verdon said the time cattle spent grazing may have been less but overall intake was no different.

"With their behaviour, how they perform and their production, there were no alarms," Dr Verdon said.

Dr Verdon said she was surprised by how quickly the cattle learnt at the Elliott research farm.

"My observations indicate that dairy cows can learn how to respond to a virtual fence within 24 hours and we had animals bring themselves to the dairy after using the technology for just four days," she said.

"I was actually surprised by how quickly the animals adapted to this new way of being managed.

"Within day one of training, 70 per cent of interactions with the virtual fence resulted in a pulse in the first eight hours with the technology," she said.

"This reduced to 28 per cent over the rest of the day and four to five per cent for the rest of the training period.

"After training, 1 per cent of interactions resulted in a pulse while in the paddock."

While other technologies only allow for virtual fencing, Halter also provides the option to virtually herd cattle to the dairy or other part of the farm.

"Cows avoiding a pulse increased from 0 per cent during training to 8 per cent in week one of management, 22 per cent in week two, 27 per cent in week three and 40 per cent in week 4," she said.

"For cows that received a pulse, the frequency declined from 1.5 pulses per day during training to 0.5/day in week one, and remained below 0.3/day for the remainder of the study."

Overall, cattle received 2.6 pulses per 100 sound cues, which is far better than research of other technology has shown, according to Dr Verdon.

Dr Verdon said each farm was different so the results did not necessarily mean all farmers should adopt the technology.

"The way we applied it was in a simple grazing regime," she said.

"If we applied it with more complex regimes, it would be advisable to fact check.

"I urge people to talk to people in the know.

"What we talk about is not the system of management but the management of the system.

"Often the application of the system and how you're managing that is more important than the system itself."

Dr Verdon said she was currently working on a project working with farmers to see what benefits there are by using the technology on a broader scale.