Virtual Fence Could Modernize the Old West 216
Hugh Pickens writes "For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. Now, animal science researchers with the Department of Agriculture are working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer. A video of Dean Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, NM., shows how he has built radios that attach to an animal's head that allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to. Anderson says it would cost $900 today to put a radio device on one head of cattle, but he says costs will fall and the entire herd wouldn't have to be outfitted, just the 'leaders.' Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow."
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not saying it's impossible for a system to one day replace cowboys, just that *this* almost certainly isn't that system. Some things are not only hard to automate, but largely impractical (which is why farmers still hire humans for such tasks as fruit-picking, harvesting lettuce, etc. even though it should be theoretically possible to automate the process).
And if you think ranch-hands make a huge "bundle of money" compared to what it would cost to outfit and maintain a herd full of transmitters at $900 a head, you are WAY out of touch with how much ranch-hands make.
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:1, Informative)
I own a small herd of goats and compete in herding trials with my border collie. One man and a good dog or two can move stock very effectively.
As for this tech. replacing fencing, I don't think just effecting leaders will stop a other individuals from crossing over to the "greener grass". Even sheep known for tight flocking, would spread out if no pressure is being applied to the whole herd.
The basically sounds like "GPS based invisible fence". I don't think you can extrapolate that most stock can learn like a dog.
Re:Intelligence of cows (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump [wikipedia.org]