46 | Halter is a winner for beef operation Natasha, Charley, Austin, Elliot and Alan from left to right, Oskar is missing. Photo: Laura Adams, Little Valley Photography. Richard Loader In February of 2024 King Country farmers Alan and Natasha Cave joined a select group of beef farmers who have adopted the Halter system of virtual fencing using world-leading solar powered collars and virtual fencing, with very positive results. Halter is more commonly associated with dairy farms, and the Caves were the fourth beef farm to utilise the technology, becoming part of Halter’s Partnership Farms programme. The farm encompasses 396 hectares of rolling to medium steep hill country in Mokauiti, between Taumaranui and Te Kuiti and is home to 150 Angus cows, including about 30 Rotowai Angus 30 stud cows, with the rest commercial breeding cows. There are also 25 R2 steers, 25 weaner heifers, 42 R1 heifers, and 42 R1 bulls, along with 1250 ewes and 370 hoggets. Key drivers for embarking on the Halter journey were to continue farming beef cows on the hills sustainably, protect the environment by effectively keeping cattle out of waterways, and make the hill country more profitable. Natasha says the collars have enabled them to go from an extensive grazing system to an intensive grazing system on their hill country using virtual fencing that is easily controlled at will using a phone app. “The cows are held behind a virtual fence with their collars. Instead of having a reel and standards the Halter app enables you to have a virtual fence wherever you wish in a paddock. Our biggest paddock is twenty hectares and prior to Halter we might have put the cows in there for up to a month at a time with the freedom to randomly graze the whole paddock. We’re now able to subdivide that paddock into daily breaks using virtual fencing, adjusted by the app on our phones. Those breaks can be grazed intensively, and then effectively back-fenced off, which means the grass is growing behind them, rather than the regrowth being constantly eaten.” With collared mums with uncollared calves afoot, the calves creep-graze ahead of mum, following all the good feed around the paddock. “They are not competing with their mums for feed and so we’re expecting to see a fairly substantial increase in growth rates to weaning.” While the Cave’s initially just collared the 150 breeding cows, it wasn’t long afterwards that they realised greater benefit would be achieved by having more stock collared, so included the yearling heifers. RURAL PEOPLE » Rotowai Angus “The cows are held behind a virtual fence with their collars. Instead of having a reel and standards the Halter app enables you to have a virtual fence wherever you wish in a paddock.” “We now have 285 animals collared,” says Alan. “It is a significant investment but it’s looking as though the collars are going to be a successful addition to our farming operation, providing we can make it fund itself, plus a bit more.” Natasha adds that it is now possible to grow and harvest more pasture, with a significant increase in quality of what is being grown. “But to really benefit from that we need to lift our stock numbers fairly substantially, and we’re just in the process of working out how that is going to look in the coming year and going forward. It has also reduced our supplement feeding down quite a bit over winter through better control of the cows and pasture.” | | || ąćĆ Ćċć ĈĆČČ ||| ąćČ ćČč ČĊąĎ k || ||| ~| } | | } ~| | | ~ ~| {ǒ | ǒ { | Ǒǒ We provide professional quality advice and friendly service to dairy, drystock, forestry, horticulture and rural businesses throughout New Zealand. Bailey Ingham are proud to support Rotowai Angus 18 Maniapoto Street Otorohanga 07 873 7325 41 Bank Street Te Awamutu 07 870 1888 | 29 Hakiaha Street Taumarunui 07 895 7315 info@baileyingham.co.nz | www.baileyingham.co.nz
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