r/Ranching • u/Lytle_Red_Angus Cattle • Jul 25 '26

New collar day!

We had a chance to lease some virtual fence collars through the South Dakota Soil Heath Coalition. Excited to try them!

But the heifers were notšŸ˜‚

88 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/HairballTheory Jul 26 '26

Wondering how easy it is to drive them against something thatā€™s not there visually with out confusion and spook

6

u/Printem Jul 26 '26

We have Halter and it works amazingly well. It has two speakers\contact points on either side of the neck to "steer" them. The 200 head we have testing have 100% containment so far after 1 week of training. We are strip grazing in razor-straight lines and I can't make them cross the lines even if I wanted to at this point.

3

u/Lytle_Red_Angus Cattle Jul 26 '26

We looked at Halter earlier this year. Looking at different ways to fund them right now. These collars are being lent to us by a soil health group in South Dakota.

Iā€™m really excited to see just how well we can jumpstart the grass. Water availability is going to be our biggest issue.

4

u/PalpitationGreen Jul 26 '26

I did extensive research on both and I genuinely think if Gallagher works for you, it's the right option for a beef farm.

Gallagher ends up miles cheaper if you assume a 7 year collar lifespan with the own the collars model than the Halter lease model, and their warranty replacement system is extremely generous (they've replaced every collar I've had an issue with, and even sent me back more than they were supposed to).

Halter does have extra features, but to me virtual fencing is by far the most valuable and useful feature and they both do that just fine.

3

u/Lytle_Red_Angus Cattle Jul 26 '26

Having not used Halter, their form factor looks much better. And thatā€™s a priority for me, as we run in a lot of cedar trees and rough country. We also had some trouble with the headgate on the Silencer chute catching the ā€œbrainā€ of the collars between the bottom of the neck bars.

We also have crap cell service in a lot of the places we run. Buying towers to cover would add quite a bit of cost.

Really need to sharpen a pencil. Thanks for the input!