Date: April 14-18, 2025 / Time: TBD

Where: Navajo Nation

Workshop Summary:

Virtual fence (VF) is currently a hot topic in rangeland management. This emerging precision livestock management technology has the potential to change grazing systems by allowing dynamic control of livestock distribution while also reducing the cost of cross fencing. According to the VF companies, all a rancher or land manager needs to do is buy a bunch of technology, put some necklaces on cows, and start managing cattle. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. Virtual fence systems are significantly more complicated.

With support from Arizona Experiment Station and the Marley Foundation for Sustainable Rangeland Stewardship, in cooperation with the Santa Rita Ranch LLC, The University of Arizona conducted a pilot study at the Santa Rita Experimental Range to assess basic product function and utility on Arizona rangelands. Over the last few years, we learned a lot and have created a workshop to share that knowledge with you.

There is a lot to know about VF and we want to share our lessons learned with you. Virtual fencing is exciting, new, and has a lot of potential—and risk. We hope this workshop empowers you to effectively evaluate VF for sustainable rangeland management.

This work is supported by USDA NIFA Western SARE (project number WPDP22-016), AFRI IDEAS (award no. 2022-10726), the Arizona Experiment Station, and the Marley Endowment for Sustainable Rangeland Stewardship.

Presentations

• Agenda
• What is Virtual Fence (Carter Blouin)
• VF Applications (Brandon Mayer)
• Vendor Comparison (Flavie Audoin)