Nofence™ – what is it?
The Nofence™ collar system is a virtual fencing system for grazing animals. It works by using a solar-powered GPS collar and a virtual boundary. The collar communicates with an app and web portal via the mobile network. The system allows you to define the grazing area and build a virtual fence in the app. These areas can be adjusted or moved remotely, giving animals access to new areas and fresh pastures whenever necessary. You can also create exclusion zones to close off areas. The system allows you to track animals and monitor grazing patterns, allowing more effective grazing utilisation, plant productivity and potentially improved herd profitability.
How do the animals know where the fence is?
The animals are trained to the boundary using audio cue. When the animal crosses the Nofence™ boundary, the collar starts playing an audio warning which starts low and gradually rises in pitch until a mild electric pulse is finally given. The animal learns to recognise the audio warning and turns around to avoid the electric pulse. Clients who have used this have found cows train to the audio cues very quickly and rarely experience the electrical pulse. The herd instinct of cows means that once one or two animals have identified the fence boundaries the whole herd stays within the assigned area.
Our client’s experience – some interesting data
The graphs below show this year’s data for body condition score in a herd using Nofence™. All animals are grazing similar chalk grassland. Two groups of cows are managed using traditional temporary electric fencing, where cows are set stocked for a period of time before being moved when grazing starts to run out. Grazing is managed by stockman’s eye and cow behaviour, rather than grass measurement. There is also a group of predominantly second calvers (‘heifers’) and a group of cows that have been managed using Nofence™.
Fig 1. (above) shows the range of body condition scores for the different groups in the autumn – just prior to weaning. There is much less of a spread of body condition in the no fence collar animals, compared to the fenced animals. This is true for both ‘Heifers no fence’ (calved in 2023 so second calvers now – renowned for struggling with condition after 1st calving) and ‘cows no fence’ (this group also contains the oldest cows, again ones often struggling with condition). The average body condition score of the no fence collar animals is also slightly higher than that of the fenced animals.
Fig 2. (above) shows an even more dramatic picture of the effect of the no fence collars for the overwinter period. The no fence collar animals have maintained their body condition well over the winter grazing period. The fenced animals have lost on average around half a condition score in both groups. There also continues to be a significant spread of body conditions in the individual cows within the group for the fenced animals.
How Nofence™ worked well for this farm
There was no possibility of scoring bias as it was the same vet doing the scoring, group sizes were large and only when the data was analysed did the trends become apparent. This trend had not been anticipated.
This data suggests that Nofence™ has worked extremely well as a management tool to improve body condition score of the cows over winter. This farm had struggled for a number of years with maintaining cow condition due to poor quality grazing and the inability to feed out any conserved forage due to environmental scheme restrictions.
The fenced animals were restricted to areas that had to be physically moved by the stockman and this relied on the availability of man-power to carry out the move. The simple and quick nature of Nofence™ allows grazing areas to be moved at the touch of a button. This means it can be done in a much more flexible way and to suit the cows, rather than the stockman’s busy schedule.
It will be interesting to see how the PD results vary between groups this autumn as it is well known that the nutritional status of cows pre- calving has a significant impact on their fertility at mating….
If you are interested in finding out more about this system and other management changes on this farm, come to our East beef farm walk later in the summer.. more details to follow.
Written By Louise Silk, Veterinary Surgeon
