Virtual Fencing A game Changer for Ranchers

Posted on February 15, 2025April 2, 2025 by Weicks-Webmaster

A rancher roundtable on using the eShepherd virtual fencing system

As the agriculture industry continues to evolve, new technologies are reshaping the way ranchers manage their livestock. Gallagher’s eShepherd virtual fencing system is helping ranchers streamline operations, reduce labor, and improve pasture management.

eShepherd uses GPS tracking and solar-powered neckbands to create virtual boundaries, offering a significant shift from traditional fencing methods.

We spoke with four ranchers who have implemented eShepherd to hear firsthand how this technology has impacted their operations.

Meet the Panel:

Nick Jorgensen – CEO, Jorgensen Land and Cattle, South Dakota

Vannie Collins – Owner, Purisima Pastures, LP, Texas

Greg Thoren – Owner, Thoren Farms, Illinois

Henry Burns – President, Wild Olive Cattle Company, Texas

Why Virtual Fencing? The Initial Motivation

When it comes to deciding whether to adopt virtual fencing, all the ranchers had unique reasons, but one common theme emerged: the desire to improve land and cattle management while reducing the physical labor involved.

Nick Jorgensen, who manages a 25,000-acre operation in South Dakota, explained that the decision was driven by logistical challenges. “We run a large number of cattle on expansive land, and managing rotational grazing with traditional physical infrastructure was becoming cumbersome. Virtual fencing allowed us to eliminate the need for additional staff and reduce the burden of manual moves,” he said.

Jorgensen’s goal was clear: increase grazing efficiency without stretching his team too thin.

Vannie Collins in South Texas made the decision based on the inefficiencies of traditional fencing in their dense brushlands. Workers find setting up electric fences in our terrain labor-intensive. Collins noted that the eShepherd system has freed up labor. The system allows us to manage our grazing more intensively. The system also makes our team available for other tasks on the ranch.

Henry Burns who runs 6 000 acres in the same region was attracted to the technology’s ability to improve forage utilization. We aimed to place animals into smaller areas more easily and compel them to be less selective about their food choices. He explained that the eShepherd system has helped us achieve that.

Simple and Straightforward Implementation

A consistent point across all interviews was how easy the Gallagher eShepherd system was to implement. Ranchers found the installation process and daily use surprisingly simple, despite the technology’s sophistication.

“It’s really amazing how easy this is—cattle just will not cross it,” Thoren said. “I can move them at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m., whenever it fits my schedule. Once I get it fully set up, I’ll even be able to move them multiple times a day automatically. That’s going to benefit my soil health, my plant health, and ultimately, my cattle’s health.”

Collins highlighted the ease of setting up the system, especially compared to the challenges of managing traditional fencing. “All we had to do was draw the paddock on the computer. It’s so much simpler than the physical work of setting up electric fences in dense brush,” he shared.

Nick Jorgensen echoed this sentiment and praised the system’s user-friendly interface: “The neckbands came fully assembled, ready to use. There was no hassle in getting them up and running. It’s been incredibly easy to integrate into our existing operations.” :

Henry Burns pointed out that the use of GPS technology was a game-changer in helping manage his cattle. “The system allows me to track exactly where my animals are at any given time. It’s really given us control over their movements, especially when managing such a large herd across a vast area,” he said.

Improved Animal Management and Land Health

The impact on both animal management and land health has been immediate. One key benefit that all the ranchers observed was the ability to implement rotational grazing more effectively. eShepherd enables the movement of cattle with greater precision, ensuring that animals don’t overgraze specific areas.

Jorgensen explained, “We can graze the land harder in specific areas but then rest it for a full year. This approach mimics natural grazing patterns like those of bison, helping improve the grass health over time.”

Burns appreciates how the system helps to optimize forage utilization. “I’m able to control paddock size, recovery periods, and grazing intensity. It’s a more controlled, sustainable way to manage land and cattle.”

For Collins, the GPS tracking of the animals has made monitoring grazing efficiency much easier. “We can adjust paddock size and grazing frequency based on real-time data. It’s a huge improvement over our old methods,” he said.

Cost Savings and Labor Efficiency

The ranchers also mentioned significant labor and time savings along with the ecological benefits. With the need to set up and move physical fences virtually eliminated, labor is freed up for other crucial tasks on the ranch.

Burns, who previously spent considerable time managing portable electric fences, explained the labor-saving potential: “Picking up and putting down the wire was a huge time sink. The eShepherd system saves us both time and money.”

Collins shared a similar sentiment: “Labor is always a challenge in ranching. The system has allowed us to be more efficient in our daily operations. It’s freed up my crew to focus on other important areas of ranching, and that’s made a big difference.”

Thoren, who ranches in the furthest northwest county of Illinois along the Mississippi, said, “With traditional fencing, we’ve lost time and money repairing flood fences after high water takes them out. Sometimes, it takes days to get those fences back up, but with virtual fencing, that’s no longer an issue. The cattle stay contained, and we don’t have to keep rebuilding physical barriers—it’s a huge savings in both labor and materials.”

A Technology for the Future

Looking ahead, the panelists see virtual fencing as a key part of their future operations.

Jorgensen envisions a future where 100% of his herd is outfitted with the eShepherd system. “In the next few years, we hope to have full utilization across our herd. The technology has already shown tremendous benefits in terms of labor efficiency and grazing management,” he said.

Collins echoed this goal and said, “We’re excited about the potential for virtual fencing to scale with our operation. The flexibility it provides is incredible.”

eSheperd, A Wise Investment

Thoren aid, “This system is going to free up so much time. Spring keeps us busy with calving and planting stretching us thin. With this, I can move cattle faster, be more diligent with back fencing, and manage pastures more efficiently without adding extra labor. It’s not just about convenience; it’s about making better use of my time and resources.”

Burns summed it up best: “If you’re dealing with a lot of portable electric fence and it’s becoming a pain point, the eShepherd system is definitely worth considering. It’s been a great investment for us.”

For ranchers looking to streamline operations, improve grazing management, and increase labor efficiency, virtual fencing may just be the solution they’ve been searching for. Interested producers can visit TryVirtualFencing.com.

Content provided by Gallagher-eShepherd

American Cattlemen 2024

Considerations for Building a Cattle Facility

Posted on December 18, 2024October 7, 2025 by Weicks-Webmaster

Considerations Before Building a Cattle Handling Facility

Properly designed and thought-out facilities will be safe for the producer and animal and will allow for cattle to be easily worked in a timely fashion.

The cattle handling facility is at the heart of most every ranch. The quality of the facility and its ease of use can determine the enjoyment or frustration of use and dictate how often you work cattle through it. Properly designed and thought-out facilities will be safe for the producer and animal, handle cattle with ease, require a minimal number of personnel and allow for cattle to be worked in a timely fashion.

There are multiple design principles that can be used, depending on the cattle-handling abilities of the personnel and their ability to understand “cow psychology.”

Here are the top 12 factors you should consider prior to building a new facility.

1. Use Type

Consider the species and type or class of animal for which the working facility will be used. Will it only be used for cattle, or will you need to handle goats and sheep, or horses, in addition to cattle? If it’s only cattle, will it be used only for a stocker operation, or will you need to process cows, bulls and calves through the chute as well? The size of cattle worked will dictate how wide of a raceway you need. Finally, do you plan to rope and drag calves, or process through a chute? Roping and dragging calves will require an area large enough to do so.

2. Bud Box or Solid-Sided, Curved Designs

Both Bud Box and solid-sided, curved designs are effective. In general, the curved, solid-sided-fence facility, in my opinion, allows the cattle handler to make mistakes and recover without adversely affecting cattle flow. If you are in the wrong position yet the animal cannot see you because of the solid side, it may not affect the movement of cattle. A drawback to this style is it is more complicated and costly to build because of the curves and the added expense of the solid-sided fences.

The Bud Box system uses the animal’s instincts to your advantage. It works on the principle that animals will want to return to where they have been if they cannot proceed further. When they turn around and head back in the direction that they came from, the animal is diverted down another alley or raceway leading up to the working chute. The drawbacks to this system are that it is typically not recommended for novice cattle handlers, and if handlers are out of place, they can impede cattle movement.

3. Location

It’s all about the location. The working facility should be central to most pastures and easily accessed, either using lanes or along adjoining fences that help funnel cattle into the facility. Having a corral situated where cattle have to routinely enter and leave on their own will facilitate penning them on working day.

One example is a catch pen situated between pastures that cattle must walk through when rotating from one pasture to the other. It could be a central watering location or where feed and hay are fed to the animals. If you plan to use the facility to hold sick or freshly received animals for a few days, then having shade from trees along the fence might be beneficial.

4. Materials

There are numerous materials that a set of working facilities can be built out of. Including; drill stem pipe, highway guardrails, cable, sucker rod, cattle panels, wood. All have their benefits and drawbacks. In general, metal building materials will probably outlast wood. Cable fences are not well-suited for working and crowding facilities. They flex too much and can allow calves to get through.

Likewise, if you have to quickly climb a fence to get away from an aggressive animal, cable fences will not support your weight well enough to allow you to quickly escape. Make sure any drill stem you purchase is not magnetized, as it makes welding difficult. Also, make sure the drill stem is not radioactive or excessively rusty if it has been used in drilling activity.

Graduated cattle panels have smaller hole sizes on the bottom of the panel, making them difficult to climb when hurrying. If using sucker rod, consider welding a clip over the rod to the line post. Experience has proven that welding a sucker rod only to a post will result in a broken weld.

5. Utilities

Having access to electricity and water is beneficial but not necessary. If you plan to use an electric branding iron, access to land-line electricity will eliminate the need for a costly and loud generator.

If you have electricity available, you can have a small room located next to the chute to store medicine and vaccines in a refrigerator. Additionally, you can have hot water to help clean up the equipment after use.

6. Cover and Shade

It is beneficial to have cover over the working chute in case you have to work the cattle in extremely hot or inclement weather. Additionally, you may decide to have a portion of the pens covered in case you need to hold a quarantined or sick animal in the facility for a length of time.

7. Slope

The working facility should have a small degree of slope to allow drainage during and after rainfall events. The slope should not be so great that erosion or channeling will occur after the grass has been trampled down.

Additionally, consider the degree and direction of the slope when planning where to back up a trailer to the pens. Backing across a slope when muddy may result in the trailer sliding sideways. Trying to pull up a muddy slope when loaded may be difficult, too.

8. Calf Chute, Palpation Cage, Gates

Buy a chute that is large enough to handle your largest animal, including your bull. It may be necessary to restrain the bull to treat a foot or to conduct a breeding soundness exam. Remember, bulls are longer and thicker than a cow. Many of the economy-type chutes are not designed to hold a bull. Also plan for a palpation cage at the end of the chute to allow a safe access area for a veterinarian so he or she doesn’t have to worry about getting run over by the next cow in line. The cage will also be handy if you have to treat a hind foot

Design the facility with options. It’s much easier to work 2-3-month-old calves in a calf chute than in a large, cow-sized chute. Do not skimp on gates! Make sure they are heavy and well-built. Plan on gates between adjacent pens and from the alleys. Having gates between pens allows you to open up adjacent pens to create one large pen when needed. Use headers across the top of the gate to ensure it stays in line and does not sag, so it opens and closes as it should. Make the headers high enough that you can drive equipment or ride horseback under them.

9. Access to Roads

You should plan to have all-weather road access to the working facility to enable you to load and unload cattle even in rainy conditions. However, placing a set of corrals right off a county road could enable cattle thieves to bait your cows into the pens and easily and quickly load out and steal animals, so keep that in mind.

10. Size

The size of the facility will be determined by the activities needed and how long you plan to hold cattle there. If you are just using the pens as a holding area while working the cattle, each cow-calf pair will require a minimum of 35 to 45 square feet. The larger the calf while on the cow, the more room that will be required.

11. Number of Pens

One of the biggest design mistakes we see is a facility without enough holding pens. It is always good to plan to have at least one more pen than you think you need. At the minimum, three pens are needed. You will need one large pen to hold the cattle when they are first caught, and then preferably two more to sort calves and cows into. This will also allow you to have an open pen to catch the animals after they have been worked so that they do not get mixed with unprocessed cattle. Designing an alleyway alongside the pens that leads to the chute allows you to sort animals out of the alley and into the pens. Additionally, the alley can be used to hold cattle temporarily.

12. Other Considerations

Build with flexibility in mind:

Design the facility so that expansion will not require a major overhaul.
Make the design modular so more pens can be added alongside existing alleys.
Make the raceway leading to the chute adjustable to enable it to be wide enough for cows, but can be adjusted down so that a calf cannot turn around in it.
Do not design the facility so that the chute turns out into the pasture. If you miss a head catch on an animal, you cannot easily recycle it back around.
Set all posts at least 3 feet down into concrete.
If concrete is used under the chute, extend at least 6 to 8 feet past the front of the chute. Make sure the concrete is heavily grooved to provide traction even when covered with mud and manure.
Reduce shadows that go across alleys by running alleys east and west if possible. Cattle do not have depth perception and may view a shadow as a hole or trench, causing them to balk.

Visit, Plan, Visualize

As you design your handling facility, go see as many other working facilities as possible in person. Talk with the people who use them, and ask what they like and what they would change. Draw your design out on paper, and then lay it out on the ground to scale. Use marking paint and survey flags to help you visualize the layout before building. Then walk through the layout as you would when working cattle. It is far easier to make adjustments in the planning stage than after everything is built.

By Robert Wells, Ph.D.

Former Noble Research Institute • Senior Regenerative Ranching Advisor

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Simple Stocking Rate Assessment

Posted on December 18, 2024October 7, 2025 by Weicks-Webmaster

Simple Stocking Rate Assessment as You Begin Regenerative Ranching

Being “overstocked” is not the same as “overgrazing.” Neither is desirable.

When it comes to grazing-land stewardship on a ranch, two concepts need to be fully understood and managed: “overstocking” and “overgrazing.” These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they refer to two very different conditions.

Overstock is the condition of carrying more livestock than the land resource can sustain, either short-term or long-term. The term applies to the property or land resource under grazing management.

Overgrazing pertains to the plants being grazed. It is the repeated grazing of a plant before fully recovering from a previous grazing event. Overgrazing occurs one plant at a time, and overstocking occurs one management unit (pasture or ranch) at a time.

Improve your land, your livestock, and your livelihood… Today!

Build resiliency and profitability for your ranching operation in your land.

There are situations where pastures are both overstocked and overgrazed – no surprise. However, contrary to conventional thought, pastures can be understocked and overgrazed simultaneously. This is often the case when a rancher sets a conservative stocking rate for a ranch. Yet, the grazing approach is either continuous or rotational, with only a few pastures. Pastures will have under-grazed and overgrazed plants present in these cases. The more-preferred plants are repeatedly grazed, while the less-preferred plants are left ungrazed until the livestock are out of the more-preferred plants. Over time, the preferred, heavily grazed plants have reduced energy resources and vigor and eventually die because they never had the opportunity to recover.

Stock appropriately for your land resource

When we approach regenerative grazing, our objective is to be stocked appropriately for the weather events and conditions of the land resource. We also need to graze the pastures appropriately, allowing them periods to rest. Proper stocking and grazing management allow for more uniform utilization of all the plants, minimizes repeated grazing of plants during a grazing event, and allows complete recovery of more-preferred plants (which usually require more extended recovery periods than the less-preferred plants).

The first step in regenerative grazing is to ensure that we are not overstocked—that our initial stocking rate is not greater than the current carrying capacity. In this context, carrying capacity is the total forage produced over time that can be comfortably allocated to grazing livestock in a specific area.

Determining an accurate carrying capacity can appear complicated due to the number of variables involved. These variables include assessing total forage production based on:

total number of grazeable acres
estimates of actual forage production by pasture and soil type
forage type
forage management
precipitation and weather conditions
distance from water, etc.,

and then allocating a percentage of the total production for grazing (for example, 25% grazing utilization for native range, 50% grazing utilization for introduced pasture). While doing this thorough assessment at some point is important, we don’t want it to impede our efforts to succeed at regenerative ranching.

Feeding Hay

To assess overstocking, look at how much hay you feed

The good news is there is a simple assessment you can use to determine if you are stocked at a level greater than your carrying capacity based on current management and current weather conditions. The amount of substitute hay you feed per year can indicate your grazing management and stocking situation.

Hay feeding to increase carrying capacity means a producer is supplying forage, usually purchased, to substitute for the lack of enough natural forage production on the ranch. We need to examine this closely.

For every month of hay that is fed above what is planned (assuming the economic feasibility of the hay), the ranch is overstocked by at least 8.3%. By the same token, for every one-month livestock are made to “hustle” for forage on range or pasture (hustle being defined as livestock grazing behavior to find the next bite of forage after most of the leaf material has been removed from a pasture), you’re also overstocked by at least 8.3%. The 8.3% is simply one month divided by 12 months times 100%.

Build resiliency and profitability for your ranching operation in your land.

If a ranch is stocked correctly, there would be enough grazeable forage at the end of the growing season to last until spring green-up. Grazeable forage ideally should last 30 days into spring. That way, livestock can graze last year’s forage (with some new growth within the stand), while the already grazed pastures recover or regrow at the beginning of the growing season.

For most producers, there will likely be a need to feed some hay for extreme conditions or occasional situations where hay is required or desired. In some climates, hay is needed during the winter due to the depth of snow cover; elsewhere, bale grazing is used for desired hoof impact. However, for many producers, especially in the South, hay is expensive to increase the carrying capacity. That is why producers should carefully evaluate the cost of hay and minimize the need for substitute hay feeding.

Overstocking can take a toll on ROI and your land resource

Substitute hay feeding does not apply only to the additional livestock numbers stocked above carrying capacity. It applies to ALL the livestock on the ranch.

Consider a ranch with a carrying capacity of 100 cows, but the current herd consists of 120 cows fed hay for 1.5 months. No substitute hay feeding is required at a stocking rate – the number of livestock present on a property for a given amount of time — of 100 cows. However, at the actual herd size of 120 cows, it is not just the extra 20 cows that require hay; all 120 cows will need to be fed hay.

Let’s generalize and assume one round bale of hay per month of hay feeding. Then, realize that the extra 20 cows cost the ranch 20 cows x 1.5 months of hay and 120 cows x 1.5 months of hay, which equals an extra 180 bales. At $100/bale delivered and fed, that is an additional $18,000 direct cost to the cow enterprise, or $900 for each of those 20 cows over carrying capacity.

Assessing the Costs

Will the calf production of the additional 20 cows cover all their other direct costs plus the additional $900? Not likely, even in a good cattle market. There is an argument that one can prorate the cost of the hay across all the cows as one examines the enterprise. But take a critical look at the incremental increase in costs relative to the increase in revenue as well as the implications for the land resource of overgrazing—the whole picture.

In regenerative ranching, we assess both the direct cost and the cost to the land and ecosystem. There is a point of diminishing returns for both economic and ecological outcomes where the additional production units cannibalize the returns to the resource. Unfortunately, it is usually after we ascertain that we have passed that point of diminishing returns.

Start regenerative ranching with a stocking rate below carrying capacity

When you begin regenerative ranching and practicing regenerative grazing, you should give yourself the best opportunity to succeed. A great place to start is to ensure that the stocking rate on the ranch is below the carrying capacity of your pastures and other growing forage.

Use this simple assessment of fed hay and “hustle” to quickly determine your carrying capacity and adjust your ranch’s stocking rate as needed. It can also help you determine a safe place to begin regenerative management on your grazing lands.

Hugh Aljoe

Hugh Aljoe serves as the director of ranches, outreach, and partnerships. He has been associated with Noble Research Institute since 1995. Before coming to Noble, he managed a 3,000-acre, 1,500-head cattle operation in Texas. Hugh received his master’s degree in range science from Texas A&M University with an emphasis in grazing management.