Virtual fencing is suddenly everywhere in ranching headlines — but not every operation is a fit. In a wide-ranging discussion on the “Future of Beef Show,” Halter President Andrew Fraser walks through the practical questions producers should ask, from herd size and terrain to water infrastructure, labor and available cost-share programs.
Fraser, originally from New Zealand, with a background in management consulting, mining and tech startups, was the featured guest on episode 20 of the Future of Beef podcast. Halter spent about five years in research and development, and is now commercially active in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. with more than 750,000 animals on the system.
“If we were being fancy, we would say that it’s an operating system for a farmer. But really at the heart of it, we are a collar for cows,” Fraser explains.
Beyond grass and fencing, Fraser sees Halter as a tool for addressing some of ranching’s most pressing human challenges: labor and succession. By automating low-value tasks like shifting poly wire and checking distant pastures, Halter lets employees focus more on animal care and land stewardship.
A Collar, an App and Virtual Fences
Halter’s system centers on a lightweight, above-neck collar and a phone app. Ranchers use the app to draw virtual fences or breaks on a map. The collars then hold or move cattle using sound and vibration cues, with a very mild pulse as a back-up.
When an animal approaches a virtual boundary, it hears a directional beep in one ear to encourage it to turn back. When it’s moving the right way, it feels a gentle vibration — something Fraser likens to a smartwatch buzz — as positive reinforcement.
Halter can also shift cattle between paddocks, replacing the need for riders, dogs or temporary electric fence to move a herd. Behind the scenes, the collars continuously track behavior such as grazing, ruminating, resting and walking, plus GPS location.
In dairy herds, Halter already uses this behavior data for heat detection and health alerts. In beef systems, it’s being used for grazing management, stock location and early warning of unusual behavior.
Training Cows with Sound, Not Shock
Fraser is quick to point out that Halter is designed around sound, not pain.
“Even our strongest pulse is 1/50 the strength of an electric fence,” he says. “So, this is not a significant shock, or anything like what cows are used to with hot wire or poly wire.”
Training a herd typically takes two to seven days. Ranchers start with an existing strip of hot wire, then gradually move it and pair the fence with sound cues, teaching cows to use sound instead of a visible wire as their boundary.
According to the podcast discussion, here are five ways a smart collar can change how producers graze cattle:
1. Turn Fixed Fences into Flexible, On‑Demand Paddocks
With virtual fencing, producers can draw the paddock on an app instead of building it with posts and wire.
“On your app, you’ll draw where you want your cows to stay, or your cattle to stay, and they will stay there,” Fraser explains.
Using the Halter system, producers can:
- Tighten or loosen breaks day‑to‑day.
- Change paddock shape, for example hub‑and‑spoke around water instead of rectangles.
- Redraw setbacks along waterways or sensitive areas instantly as rules or conditions change.
According to Fraser, using Halter, producers can graze to the residuals they want, in the spots they want, without being locked into permanent fencelines.
2. Intensify Rotational Grazing and Boost Pasture Utilization
For all the technology involved — solar-powered collars and towers, satellite data, and machine learning — Fraser insists Halter’s value proposition starts with something simple: better grass management.
Because cattle can be kept in tighter areas and moved frequently with sound cues, rotational grazing becomes much more precise and practical. Fraser says producers “should be able to make the cost of Halter back from gains in pasture alone.”
By holding cattle in small areas and moving them often, Fraser says:
- You push cattle to eat more uniformly — not just the “ice cream” spots.
- You protect regrowth by not overgrazing favorite areas.
- You can raise stocking rate or hold numbers steady with fatter cattle.
He gave an example of a Wyoming ranch that went from grazing approximately 800 to 1,500 head in a year, pairing Halter with better water infrastructure to fully use its grass.
3. Replace Chase-and-Pressure Moves with Calm, Low‑Stress Shifts
Instead of horses, bikes, dogs and yelling, with the Halter system cattle learn to move on their own in response to sound and vibration. Fraser explains the cues are beeps in one ear or the other to turn left or right. Apple Watch–style vibrations are positive reinforcement when they’re headed the right way.
This changes how producers graze by turning musters and shifts into scheduled, low‑stress, almost “hands‑off” events, which is better for cattle, people and time use.
4. Use Data on Behavior and Biomass to Refine Grazing Decisions
Smart collars and supporting tools give real data on what’s happening in the paddock, not just gut feel. Behind the scenes, Halter has invested heavily in data science and artificial intelligence (AI). Today, Halter uses on-collar machine learning to interpret behavior, plus satellite imagery and weather data to estimate pasture biomass and residuals.
Halter helps producers track where cows are, how long they graze, ruminate, rest and move. It can help calculate how many tons of dry matter are consumed.
“We’re able to tell you what the residual is when the cow goes in, what the residual is when the cow leaves,” Fraser says.
This helps ranchers understand herd-level dry matter consumption between moves. Looking ahead, Fraser is especially interested in individual cow feed efficiency — answering a question many ranchers have wondered about for years.
Right now, he said, producers know which cows are the heaviest or give the most milk, but not how much forage each one eats to get there. Halter hopes to help identify animals that eat less but still perform well, offering new levers for genetic selection, profitability and sustainability.
Today, consumption data is built from satellite data plus time in paddock plus behavior. He says the research and development aim is to go from herd-level to cow-level intake, so producers know which cows are genuinely efficient, not just big eaters.
5. Integrate Grazing with Water, Labor, Risk and Regulations
Fraser summarizes once producers can move virtual fences easily, grazing decisions connect more tightly to other constraints:
- Water access: Producers can design hub‑and‑spoke paddocks around fixed water or move small troughs and redraw breaks to match.
- Labor: Less time on poly wire and fence repair frees people up for land and animal work; Fraser notes that avoiding “boring tasks” is a big benefit.
- Risk and emergencies: Ranchers have used Halter to move cattle in floods or fires when it’s unsafe or impossible for people to go in, and fences might burn or wash out.
- Changing rules: When riparian buffer rules tightened in New Zealand, farms with Halter simply redrew the virtual exclusion zones. “If you had fencing, that would have been a huge cost to move all of that. If you had Halter, you just drew a different break on your phone,” Fraser says.
Those factors change grazing from a mostly fence‑ and labor‑limited system to one that’s more data‑, water‑ and policy‑aware, and much quicker to adjust.
Not a Fit For Everyone
Fraser was upfront that Halter falls short or isn’t a fit yet for:
- Very small “hobby” herds — fewer than 50 head — return on investment doesn’t pencil out.
- Extremely large, ultra-extensive ranches — tower-based communications still limit practicality.
- True cow-level feed intake/efficiency today — still herd-level, with individual metrics as an research and development goal.
- Full system integrations and “AI for everything” — they’ve done relatively few integrations so far and intentionally avoid AI where it doesn’t clearly help producers.
For an industry built on barbed wire and sweat, the idea that cattle might one day move mostly to the sound of a beep and the buzz of a collar is a big shift. But for Fraser, that’s exactly the point: use technology to make ranching more controlled, more flexible and more humane — without losing sight of what matters most on the land.
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