Gallagher is showcasing a virtual fencing system at Fieldays® that will revolutionise pastoral livestock operations, helping farmers meet environmental regulations and saving them millions of dollars on traditional fencing.
The development and commercial expansion of eShepherd will accelerate following the announcement that Gallagher has acquired Agersens, a leading Australian-based developer in virtual fencing technology. Gallagher first began investing in eShepherd in 2016.
eShepherd allows graziers to control the location and movement of cattle using a web application and an intelligent, solar-powered neckband connected to the internet via a base station. Testing, through a beta trial programme in Australia and New Zealand, shows the technology is proving effective in rotational grazing and the protection of riparian zones.
Gallagher Global Strategy & New Ventures Manager Sarah Adams says eShepherd will provide farmers with a valuable tool for maximising pasture utilisation and productivity, but also help them tackle a number of bigger industry challenges.
“The future of farming is digital and hi-tech. Farmers need tools to make their lives easier on farm and provide them with data to drive good decision making.
“There are also bigger issues at play, with farmers coming under increasing pressure to produce more with less. From animal welfare and climate change to protecting our precious natural resources, the pressure is on them as food producers.
“eShepherd is an example of the type of technology our industry needs to remain efficient, profitable and sustainable, and ultimately maintain our license to operate.”
Sarah says livestock producers with operations spanning thousands of hectares, often on hilly, remote terrain can be extremely difficult to fence. Add to that Government regulations and fencing becomes a challenging and expensive business.
“eShepherd is an exceptional example of clever, customer-inspired technology that will change the way the livestock industry manages pasture and animals. And the potential cost savings are huge.”
Using eShepherd, farmers can set up virtual paddocks and fence lines to effectively manage their stock. They create the virtual fence from either their tablet or computer using GPS coordinates on a digital map of their property.
Animals are then fitted with a GPS-enabled neckband. As they near the GPS fence, they are alerted by an audio cue from the neckband - a loud beep. If they move away from the fence, nothing further happens. If they ignore the cue and cross the boundary the neckband delivers a short aversive electrical pulse – a training approach similar to that used for a traditional electric fence.
Commercial trials have been conducted involving animal behaviour specialists in Queensland (Australia) and on a number of New Zealand properties. Results showed cattle typically learn to respond to the audio cue within seven days.
The GPS-driven interface also has the capability for farmers to create exclusions zones within the inclusion area, allowing overgrazed paddocks, areas prone to pugging or waterways within a paddock to be virtually fenced off.
All trials have been run under animal ethics approval. The technology will detect if an animal is being chased or has bolted through the eShepherd fence and will automatically turn off.
“Once the animal gets back to walking speed the system will again put a fence in front of them and start herding them back to where they should be,” says Sarah.
Farmers can set up as many virtual paddocks as they need. When cattle are ready to be moved, the farmer selects the virtual paddock destination and, if it is contiguous, the system pushes them to the new paddock from the back.
If cattle are being moved a large distance the virtual fence is simply deactivated and then reactivated in the new paddock.
Producers can currently register their interest to become part of the Beta programme. To find out more and to register your interest about eShepherd click here.
There is a perfect storm on the horizon in agriculture; population growth, tech advances, government regulations and changing consumer behaviours are pushing farmers and businesses into new and ground-breaking practices to stay productive and profitable. At Gallagher we’re keeping one step ahead of the storm, developing the solutions that will guide farmers and consumers into the future.
One year after acquiring Agersens, the founding developers for the eShepherd solution, we’ve been working behind the scenes to build a product that farmers will love.
eShepherd Virtual Fencing
eShepherd increases productivity and profitably through more efficient use of your land and time by being able to section livestock remotely, avoiding over and/or under grazing your pasture, improving your soil health and stocking rates. All this, while improving the management and welfare of your animals through monitoring individual animal locations at any time from your tablet or PC and moving their location without stress.
The neckband itself is comfortable and safe for animals with a flexible strap that releases under load if the neckband becomes snagged. The surfaces are smooth and prevent rubbing or chaffing under continued wear. It's also solar-powered, and fully adjustable ensuring a great fit for each animal.
In New Zealand we’ve partnered with the Pāmu Group who manage over 100 sheep, beef cattle, dairy and deer farms, as well as forestry and avocados orchards. Pāmu Group tell us that “we would move mountains to get this technology permanently implemented on our farms” and say that eShepherd is helping to drive their business strategy forward, including bringing innovations that enable their digital journey to support compliance, assurance, and revenue growth, and boosts automated processes which save time for their teams and support other areas of the business such as genetic improvements.
The future is connected, and wearable...
eShepherd will provide a quantum leap for sustainable, efficient livestock production - the next evolutionary step in your pasture management. We know that going without physical fencing is ground-breaking tech and could be a challenging concept, but what we love about eShepherd is not that different from the products and services we use every day – here's how:
- Connected: From our TVs and music to fridges and doorbells, more items every day are being added to our connected homes, and farms are no different.
Data is increasingly being used by farmers to understand and best manage productivity, make data-driven decisions to find ways to grow more from less, and demonstrate traceability. Connecting the data points is key to getting this right. - Wearable: For hundreds of years farmers have used on-animal technology. From bells on goats, to the more modern practice of visual and electronic ear tags and health collars. The difference now is that the on-animal technology is smart, connected and adding so much more value through real-time analysis – think of it as a Smartwatch for your herd!
The great thing is that this is not the future; this is now - information is being collected, it just needs collaboration to pull it all together, and importantly, be easy for the farmer to analyse to make better farming decisions.
At Gallagher, we know eShepherd™ will be the next evolutionary step in pasture management, but for many customers going without physical fencing is ground-breaking tech and could be a challenging concept. So, as we continue to prepare for launch, sharing our story and letting people see the system in action is important. Many of our trials have been in traditional agricultural settings, where this technology and other developments in farming technologies are the key to unlocking the future of farming... but it turns out virtual fencing could be just as effective in many events, as we recently found out at our first trial in Europe.
Sutton Park is a national nature reserve located near Birmingham in the UK, covering approx. 900 ha, with around a third being grasslands. Each year, Adam Neachell, a local farmer, brings his cattle to the park for around six months, to naturally graze the grasslands, maintain the ecology and encourage local biodiversity... but there is an issue with this...
Coldfield Golf Club is located in the north-west of the national park and in the past cattle have caused damage to the course. However, because the club is on public land, they are not allowed to use physical fencing to protect the fairways and greens.
In addition to the golf club, in July 2022, some events of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games were held at Sutton Park – and no one wants to run their sneakers through a cowpat in the middle of a triathlon!
Savvy club member, Keith Hopkinson, saw an opportunity with Gallagher to trial the virtual fencing solution to keep animals off the Golf Course, so he and Adam worked with Birmingham Council and the Games Organizers to set up for the summer.
“The city council’s Animal Welfare team backed the proposals for a range of reasons including the fact that traditional electric fencing poses a threat to wildlife, especially deer – but the virtual system does not affect any other wildlife and allows them to move freely without risk.” Birmingham City Council
After a short trial and training period with the eShepherd™ solar-powered GPS collars fitted to the cattle at Adam’s farm to let the animals learn the alert and electric pulse actions, they were moved to Sutton Park in May 2022.
Keith was really pleased to be able to run the trial after it had first been submitted in 2017, saying “It was clear from the outset that a virtual fencing system offered many advantages to all stakeholders in the park. This includes better visibility and control of grazing patterns throughout the park, improving the quality of the historic heathland and woodland, and improving animal welfare as well as protecting the golf course from the risk of costly damage.”
During the trial in an interview for the BBCs Midlands Today program, Keith said, “It’s working really well – we're all delighted with the way it’s working.”
“Have you ever heard the like? Clever stuff!” Midlands Today presenter, Mary Rhodes
The grazing season at Sutton Park came to an end in early September, which means the neckbands have now been removed from animals and packed away, ready for another season next year.
Gallagher’s Customer Support Lead for the Sutton Park Trial, Andrew Zipsin has been reviewing the data and says, “The eShepherd Web App has collated the animal location data for the entire season and a ‘heatmap’ clearly shows that the animals were effectively kept off the golf course, and away from the Commonwealth Games Triathlon area. Everyone involved has been absolutely delighted with the application of this new technology to solve an otherwise difficult problem.”
Click here if you want to find out more about the eShepherd™ system.
Winners of Australia’s international design awards were announced on Friday 8 September at the 2023 Australian Good Design Awards attended by guests from the design and architecture community.
Gallagher eShepherd™ eS1 received a prestigious Good Design Award Winner Accolade in the Product Design category in recognition for outstanding design and innovation.
The Good Design Awards Jury commented,
“The benefits this project offers to the areas of mustering, pasture management and fence maintenance are potentially enormous — well done.”
The Good Design Awards are the highest honour for design and innovation in Australia and rewards diverse projects across 11 Design Disciplines covering more than 35 Categories and Subcategories. The 2023 Good Design Awards attracted over 900 high-quality design projects from around the world, evaluated by more than 70 Australian and international Jurors, including designers, engineers, architects and thought leaders.
How did eShepherd stand out through this tough competition to take a top spot? Our story detailed the challenge that farmers around the world face, and how eShepherd’s innovative design will make an impact on farming efficiency and operations:
The Challenge
Physical fences are one of the oldest and most useful technologies in agriculture. However, they require significant capital investment for installation, ongoing maintenance costs and factors such as rough, inhospitable terrain or seasonal ecological grazing restrict where permanent fences can be installed. eShepherd offers a smarter, digital way to operationalise businesses and addresses some of the most significant problems cattle producers face, offering benefits to farmers’ lifestyles, the natural environments which they farm, and the bottom line of their farming operations.
The Gallager eShepherd eS1 Solution
Comprised of a solar-powered GPS-enabled neckband and cloud-based application to fence, farmers can easily move and monitor livestock by detecting and responding to animal behaviour. This endlessly and instantly adaptable fencing solution allows farmers manage livestock anywhere on their farm, breaking down difficult to fence paddocks into smaller grazing cells to run a more efficient and thriving pasture-based system. This improves pasture productivity by accessing more dry matter, avoiding overgrazing, and optimising pasture utilisation while reducing dependency of physical fencing resources, such as materials and skilled labour.
The Impact
eShepherd enables farmers to implement cell grazing or rotational grazing systems that are tailored to farm geography, vegetation, and seasonal variations. It enables sustainable land management and regenerative agriculture by providing an efficient method to change grazing patterns and ensure pastures are used effectively. The system connects with web and mobile applications that enable farmers to instantly fence, move and monitor livestock remotely, which may significantly reduce risk during emergency events and provides a precision livestock management system; monitoring each animal within the herd as an individual, ensuring no animal gets left behind and health issues can be proactively identified.
“To be recognised with an Australian Good Design Award tells the world this project not only represents design excellence, but it also surpasses the criteria for design innovation and design impact. The Good Design Award is an independent endorsement of professional design quality,” said Dr. Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia and Chair of the Australian Good Design Awards.
“The Good Design Awards recognise and celebrate the transformative power of design to find innovative, customer-centric solutions to local and global challenges. My sincere congratulations to all the designers, engineers, architects and innovators recognised in this year’s Awards - you deserve to be celebrated at the highest level possible,” Dr. Gien concluded.
eShepherd is being launched on specific beef farming operations across New Zealand. Submit your enquiry today and Gallagher will be in touch when eShepherd is suitable for you.
The cost of permanently excluding animals from waterways and protected areas is fuelling beef farmers’ interest in virtual fencing as they look for innovative solutions to comply with environmental regulations. The insights were garnered from research carried out by Gallagher as part of its farmer-led product development process to bring its New Zealand-made virtual fencing solution, eShepherd™ to the market.
New freshwater regulations from Government mean that by 01 July 2025, all lakes, wetlands, and waterways wider than one meter will need to be fenced. And that is no small feat. “The new rules pose a unique challenge for New Zealand beef farmers who are often managing remote and vast areas of land interlaced by multiple hard-to-fence waterways,” says Gallagher GM Global Strategy & New Ventures Sarah Adams.
“It could cost some of them millions of dollars in traditional fencing. With rising fencing costs, skills shortages and long lead times for fencing materials, they are desperately looking for alternative solutions that can save them time and money long term. This is a significant challenge that virtual fencing can help farmers tackle.”
The new waterway exclusion rules will be managed by New Zealand’s 11 regional councils. Gallagher has presented eShepherd to a number of the regional authorities for consideration as a viable solution. “We will be working with some of these authorities on proof-of-concept trials over the coming months,” says Sarah.
As well as a viable solution for waterway exclusion, eShepherd can help farmers implement a grazing regime that promotes the health of their land and pasture. “eShepherd gives farmers the ability to implement flexible and adaptable grazing patterns, which can improve the productivity of their soil, pastures, and animals,” says Sarah. “It also means they can move livestock away from nutrient loading areas and hold them on areas of less palatable pasture to clean up and improve soil fertility.”
Removing physical barriers to animal migration paths can also help an areas biodiversity flourish – a huge benefit of eShepherd over physical fence. “A physical fence may contain livestock, but limits the migratory movement of wildlife,” says Sarah. “eShepherd allows livestock to graze a contained area without putting up a barrier that interferes with wild animals that need to pass through.”
As our climate changes and natural disasters become more common place, eShepherd could also help prevent stock loss and injury when disaster strikes. “Physical fencing infrastructure constrains livestock from moving to safety, carries a high cost to recover, and requires human presence in dangerous scenarios to manage,” says Sarah. “With eShepherd, farmers can quickly locate and move livestock away from environmental dangers such as flooding, wildfire and other natural disasters.”
It also enables farmers to reinstate livestock containment quickly. Virtual fences can be reactivated, and livestock controlled immediately, removing the need for costly and labour-intensive reinstatement of physical fences. Allowing you to focus on recovering from the environmental event.
Farmers interested in learning more or wanting to submit an enquiry can register here.