AgriTech pilot shows labor, environmental gains from virtual fencing but flags cell-service and cost barriers

Dan Smith, executive director of the AgriTech Institute, presented results of a two-year pilot of GPS-based virtual fencing to a legislative committee, describing trials on Vermont cattle and goat farms and with utilities that manage power-line vegetation.

The pilot, funded in part by a $150,000 legislative appropriation routed through VHCV and complemented by contributions from the Dairy Business Innovation Center and other local foundations, tested collar-mounted GPS units controlled by a phone app to set movable pasture boundaries, presenters said.

The technology uses a phone app to draw fence boundaries; animals wear collars that produce an audio warning as they near a line and an electrical stimulus if they cross it. "It's kind of like the invisible fence for dogs," Smith said, adding the collars communicate location by GPS after they are loaded.

Kristen Doolin, owner of Doseley Farm in Bakersfield, described putting the system on a 50-goat dairy herd starting mid-July and said, "suddenly our milk production jumped up into, like, 12–13% improvement in milk production." Doolin said that access to browse and wooded forage previously too labor-intensive to fence by hand was the major reason for the increase and that the system helped keep goats in place more reliably than prior net fencing.

Ben Nader of Sun…