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-adapted Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
"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"
Looks like they're finally re-adapting that technology once reserved only for our most esteemed government leaders ;)
The animal trials usually come before the human trials -- but I don't know if I'd consider any of our current heads of state still "human" ...
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps. But you sound like a whole lot of people whose jobs have since been replaced by automation.
Seriously.
For example, it was once said that vinyl-cutting CAD/CAM systems would never replace the journeyman sign painter (yes, signs used to be painted by hand!). You could NEVER do all the stuff that a guy with a brush and some paint could do.
Yet, today, you pretty much can. There are very few people left who actually know how to layout and paint a sign by hand like an old pro. Most sign companies don't even have a hand lettering person on staff anymore.
This might be in its infancy, but it is possible -- even likely -- that one day, something along these lines might actually be made to work well enough to replace experienced ranch hands.
If a rancher can even eliminate the need for 1 or 2 ranch hands with this technology, in the long-run, he'll save himself a bundle of money.
Take me to your leaders (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Notice I said "in the long run". At first, a rancher might start with outfitting the 'leaders' amd try the tech out. Or they might try it on some small herd on a contained plot of land, or something like that. I don't know much about ranching, honestly. But what I am saying is that that's kind of how things got started in the sign industry -- the CAD/CAM systems that came out at first really couldn't replace a sign painter. And they were expensive. It cost the annual salary of like 3-4 journeyman sign painters just to buy one machine.
But as the tech got better and economies of scale kicked in, you can by a machine complete with software that can power a small sign shop run by a single person for about a couple of grand. Less if you buy used.
So they'd start out with little projects here and there, and slowly but surely everything got automated more and more and more. To the point that these days, there are no more sign painters.
Sign painters figured they'd never get replaced by automation because they had a skill, and there was no way to automate that.
But I'm telling you, even if it isn't *this* tech, a radio-powered *something*, probably combined with other tech, will likely be used to herd cattle around someday.
So people going around emphatically denying that this profession or that profession is 'safe' from automation are most likely wrong, in the grand scheme of things.
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see a lot of cattle since I moved to Alaska, but years ago I grew up among a lot of them. Dairy cattle fifty years ago surely didn't need a pager to tell them when to come in to be milked! They were there without fail twice a day, most of them even entering the barn and poking their heads into their accustomed stantion.
If an individual didn't show up on time, you'd better go find what's the matter with her.
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as a note, the dairyman that I had to deal with wanted to mod the pager for louder beeps and longer battery life. He had enough cows to overwhelm his milking barn and took them in turns from different fields. The pagers made a huge difference for him. We did the mods - encased it in a 'waterproof' project case, ran battery and speaker connections external from the pager, and all was good. He got about 1 month battery life and effective management of the cows at milking time. I extended my trip to watch the cows come in for milking several times. One of the many odd stories I've collected over the years.
Re:Intelligence of cows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Intelligence of cows (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a time when intelligence of human children and more so of their parents weighed heavily in humans reaching reproductive age. Then we became civilized enough and technologically assisted enough that it makes very little difference.
Of course, being mostly geeks, we probably don't want to go back to when keen natural eyesight, strong muscles, fast nerves, muscle coordination, and agreeable stomachs also weighed heavily in survival.
docility (Score:3, Interesting)
They are bred for docility and for large and fast weight gain and huge milk production. Docility is number one though, you can't do squat with a really wild cow (total range cows excluded, they are all mostly wild) I have an eastern perspective on this, and a small herd that are traditional barbed wire fenced in. I have one now, pretty wild and suspicious, takes me forever to lure it into the barn/corral in order to deal with it, like de worming, etc.. The rest, tame enough, come when they are called-literally, I just yell at them to come on in. I make a point every new calf to go up to them and rub them a lot and get them to smell me and be around me for the first week, momma willing of course, most put up with it because we get along OK, and it works, they get and stay at least half tame-to me anyway, not to anyone else around here. Dairy cows I have worked with, about as tame as puppies, most of them anyway, because they are handled daily and want to be milked, they line up for it. As to smarts a big variable there, I've seen some pretty sharp ones then some walking vegetables, the majority are in between. Lot of folks around the world still use oxen for working, singly or in teams, they tame up and are smart enough to be reliable enough for that sort of thing. I was going to do that myself, but haven't had a good set of bull twins yet.
Re:Intelligence of cows (Score:3, Interesting)
i'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. if you panic a large crowd of people by say, threatening their life, you could herd them towards a cliff too. such tactics have been used in many historic battles [battlefieldbiker.com] to corner enemy troops. it's probably one of the more obvious tactics for using terrain to your advantage.
when a large group of individuals/herd of bison/whatever are running from danger, they tend to move as a single mass. this may be an evolutionarily learned trait since in the wild, if a predator is chasing a herd, the animal that is separated from the heard is singled out. aside from protection in numbers, this strategy also allows the mature animals to form a protective wall around the more vulnerable young, so this is a good defense usually.
but large groups of panicked animals, and this includes humans, can be easily herded by a smaller group of coordinated attackers. and once you have a stampede effect where individuals are bunched together, then the individuals at the back are simply following the stampede and cannot see what's ahead, and by the time the individuals at the front can see that there's a cliff they can't stop and simply get pushed over the cliff by the individuals behind them.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
HEY! Already thought of this! (Score:2, Interesting)
So funny, a friend and I were bouncing emails back and forth over the use of small GPS chips after seeing an article on GPS enabled pet collars. The Desire to Profit was in mind... we envisioned a cool web site with all sorts of interesting images of cattle being manipulated by cool technology,etc. Anyway, my joke/rant from 2003:
The Digital Ranch(tm)
"Wireless Ranch(tm)"... (Web site and hardware in development, pricing to be announced)
So, you have your herd of cattle, bison, horses, sheep, whatever- you implant one "Ranchhand(tm)" chip in each, and then you can monitor all your ranch assets via your computer. Each chip monitors all of the animals vital statistics, as well as it's location, and reports them to you via wireless networking. So you can pull up a real-time display of your herd at any time, pick out individual animals and check on their health, see where they've been, set watch points on health and be notified if anything goes out of bounds. Of course, all this ties into "Ranch Database(tm)" that you use to track the health and progress of each animal through it's life cycle.
Each animal can also be fitted with the optional "Drover(tm)" module, which provides audible signals to the animal (backed up with a mild to severe electric shock) to modify the animals behavior. As the animal approaches the perimeter of the area you have defined as available to it, it receives a pleasant "chirp" warning it not to proceed, followed by a mild shock if it doesn't comply. Fences and the cost of their maintenance become a thing of the past! When it's time to move the herd to another pasture, to the barn, etc., the "Wireless Ranch" software module will send the appropriate signals to gather your assets together and herd them to where they need to be. Individual animals can be separated and directed as needed for grooming, health maintenance, harvesting, etc.
Feeding chores become more efficient with the "Smart-Trough(tm)". Using the "Drover(tm)" module, animals can be guided to specific feeding receptacles, so supplements and medications can be automatically dispensed to specific animals. Using the optional pressure mat at each feeding trough allows you to automatically weigh each animal. With the "Ranch Vet(tm)" health monitoring software the need for supplements and medications can be automatically assessed and dispensed!
Docile healthy animals, with less effort than ever before- the "Wireless Ranch(tm)" is your ticket to a more efficient and profitable ranch than ever before!
Re:Intelligence of cows (Score:3, Interesting)
Amen.
Remember the old quote (I think it's from Arnold himself): Being in shape is 60% nutrition, 30% exercise and 10% genetics.
You forgot to mention soda. It's the #1 reason for geeks (and everybody else) to be fat and unhealthy.
Re:This sounds laughably impractical (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, cows are big clumsy animals, both by nature and due to breeding. But they're certainly not totally devoid of presence and thought, as you seem to imply. I didn't just labor near these animals, but I hand milked them daily. People who have hand-milked animals like cows and goats know there is a bond formed between them and the animal. They know full well that they could kill you in an instant, yet they recognize the give-and-take relationship they're part of.
As for the stairs... cows have little to no depth perception. That's why you can paint cattle guards across a road and it'll be as effective as a real cattle guard. They're not dumb, but self-serving. You of all people should know this. Bovines are known to be more sure-footed than horses, which are skittish creatures bordering on neurotic. They simply won't put their feet down where they're uncertain of the consequences (except when they're in a panic). That's why oxen are preferred as beasts of burden over horses, at least in countries where people aren't too proud to have cattle perform such work.
Still, I think that this idea is rather dumb. People who range cattle here in the West aren't making a killing as it is, and devices like these solve a problem that doesn't exist, in a very expensive way. Cheap radio beacons for tracking down cattle that have been ranging in the wooded mountains for the summer? Maybe. Probably not. But remote controlling cattle is something only a foolish marketing drone would come up with.