@halterhq

Cows taking themselves to the shed - how good? Disclaimer: the only thing faster than this shift is is our slick editing skills. Halter cows walk at a normal pace, promise.

Fodder beet grazing. Halter-style 🤝

Yep it means you don’t have to sit behind your cows anymore. How good. #nzfarming #dairyfarming #nzfarmer #farmernz #farmlife #farmingnz #dairyfarm

Hop in for a ride with Michael Gooden in the Riverina, NSW, Australia 🛺 He thought he had cell grazing sorted after 10 years, then he put on Halter and was ready to go back back to school. While calving, Michael was shifting his breeders twice a day, the question on his mind: how long on each virtual break gives them the right amount of grass? Between what the collars tell him about his cows and his own observations in the paddock, he’s already tracking to that number. Ten years in, and still learning. That’s the best part! #nswfarming #virtualfencing #riverina #halterau #halter #australianfarmers #australianbeef

A pre-calving tip from Knighter! James Knight had 250 breeders in one paddock in western Victoria, Australia, with calving just around the corner. Labelling his mid and late calvers as 2 mobs in the Halter app gave him the flexibility to split them. With extra feed at the end of the paddock, he moved the virtual break forward for his mid-calvers and held his lates in place, leaving his mid-calvers the last 10 to 15 hectares to calve down on. Not a single physical fence went up. One paddock, plenty of options! #australianfarmers #halterau #calving #virtualfencing #vicfarmers #victoriaagriculture #australianbeef

Meet Kenny Leuken, from northern Missouri. Even after thirty-two years of rotational grazing, he's still picking up new tricks, and he's got a lot to say about what virtual fencing has changed for him.

Wildfire needs fuel, and on rangeland that fuel is the dry grass left standing at the end of the season. The more of it on the ground, the faster and hotter a fire can burn. Nick Etcheverry uses his cattle as a tool to bring that down. With virtual fencing, he can hold the herd where the grass is heaviest and graze it down, so there's far less left to burn. When a fire reaches ground the cattle have grazed, it runs out of fuel and slows, which gives crews a real shot at containing it before it turns catastrophic.

South of Bakersfield, on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, Nick Etcheverry runs cattle that do more than just raise beef. Nick and his father Jim are Eureka Livestock, a Basque family that has raised sheep and cattle across California and Nevada for about a hundred years. They ran sheep for ninety of them, then sold the flock six years ago to focus the operation on cattle. What they kept was the sheepman's restlessness: the habit of always looking for the next piece of feed and the willingness to work country they'd never seen before. Today they run around 2,100 mother cows across six ranches as much as 500 miles apart, from the high desert of Eureka, Nevada down to the grass south of Bakersfield. On a nature preserve south of Bakersfield, Nick grazes his cattle to control the invasive annual grasses on the range. The preserve runs from valley grassland up into steep canyon country, most of it too rough and too spread out to clear with a mower or a crew, so the cattle do it. Grazing the grass down keeps the residual dry matter low for endangered species like the giant kangaroo rat and the kit fox, and it cuts the fire load on a preserve the public hikes, where a grass fire can spread fast. In this episode of A Halter Series, we spend time with Nick and Jim across the operation, from the springs that keep the dry country running to the Peruvian horsemen who run the cattle, and see how a family that has always been willing to change is now using cattle to manage land, not just raise beef on it. Watch the full story at the link in our bio. 💚

Ag Day at Oklahoma State University is all about the people who feed the world, and we couldn't think of a better crowd to spend it with. We brought some of our Oklahoma ranchers out for a Halter tailgate and then took the crew to cheer on the Cowboys. We asked folks what Ag Day means to them, and the answer was pretty much unanimous: agriculture is the foundation of everything, and it's what connects people back to the land and to the food on their table. To every rancher, farmer, and every family who pulls the long days so the rest of us can eat, thank you. We're grateful for you. 🤠 🌾

On a dairy farm in Matamata, New Zealand, Ryan and his team have shifted to split calving with the majority in the autumn (fall for our American friends) since using Halter. They've been able to manage the winters better with this split – growing more feed and seeing a lift in milk production, enabled by the precision of the pasture allocation on Halter.

Want to know a beef farmer's top three favourite things about Halter??? Just ask James Knight from Sisters Pastoral Co. in Southwest Victoria! Halter beef rep Travis McKenzie swung by for a catch up, and since James started running Halter in May he's already seeing serious results. Or maybe that's just the Travis effect? 👀

"We always focused on the cow. Now we focus on the how." 🌱 Robert and Stacy at Nantz Land and Cattle in Texas spent years looking for the edge that would make ranching both sustainable and profitable, always asking what more they could give the cows. Then they tried a more regenerative management style. Within a year, revenue was up 40% and their biggest costs, from lease and fuel to feed and vet care, had dropped by 30 to 40%. A lot of it came from doing less and letting the land do more. As they say themselves, take care of the soil, and it takes care of everything else. These days the grass grows so much they can't even keep up with it.

"We love ranching. We want to do this because we love the lifestyle." Tradition doesn't have to mean staying still. For Robert and Stacy Nantz at Nantz Land and Cattle in Texas, it means keeping the cowboy culture alive while finding smarter ways to make the ranch work. They're still horseback and still in their cattle, and the tools they've added haven't changed that. If anything, the technology gives them more room to do the parts of ranching they love, while keeping the operation profitable too. Staying traditional without staying still. Why not both?

Dairy farmer, Brad, in Reporoa New Zealand, does multiple shifts throughout the day with Halter... without lifting a gate or riding a bike. For him, more shifts mean tighter grazing rounds, better pasture utilisation and residuals that hit the mark every time. It's a small change in routine that adds up to a big difference in the vat 📈 Head to the link in the comments if you want to learn more about how farmers are getting more consistent residuals with Halter.

🐄 Fresh calf drop! 🐄 On dairy farms all around New Zealand, farmers are getting into some of the most intense and important few months of the year – calving season. It's cold, it's tiring and it's a huge effort to bring another generation into the herd, so for the next few months we're going to be sharing stories and tips on how kiwi farmers navigate the challenges of calving, and the ways they're using Halter to improve the season for themselves and their herd. Like this clip: pausing mum's collar when she's freshly calved, means she can leave the break, access fresh grass and follow her calf. Stay tuned for more stories of kiwi ingenuity in action throughout the season and click the link in bio to learn more.

Misty Downs in Mount Compass are the first farmers in South Australia to collar their herd with Halter! Perrin Hicks and son, Nathan, are getting collars on before calving kicks off next week. Talk about great timing! Nathan can't wait to swap cold mornings on the motorbike for a warmer start to the day, and he's looking forward to the extra hand with mustering. Perrin's keen to get stuck into the pasture data, especially grass utilisation, and to see the flow-on benefits for cow health. We can't wait to see them on their journey. South Australia this is just the beginning! 🤩

Just look at these happy Angus cattle getting their fix of a kale crop at sunset! A powerhouse team made up of Ed and Mill Durham and Al & Jo Mackinnon from Mackinnon Pastoral are located out of Tintaldra in Victoria's upper Murray region, Australia. Since getting started with Halter, Mackinnon Pastoral have ticked every box they aimed to. The improved pasture utilisation and growth has meant they've been able to welcome agistment cattle and add more steers to the operation, upping their stocking rates in the process. Same country. More cattle. A lot less fencing!

Bruce and Myra Lueken have a rare condition called Pompe disease. To the family it’s just everyday life, and the two of them have grown up out on the ranch in every season. What John didn’t always know was how much of the work their bodies would let them do. Virtual fence is part of the answer. Bruce can now check cattle from a four-wheeler and move the herd from his phone instead of out building fence all day, the kind of work that might otherwise be beyond him. John’s hope is that both of them come back to the ranch one day. This is part of what makes that possible. Episode 5 of A Halter Series is live. Watch the full story on our US YouTub. 🤠

Grady Grissom knew he wanted to be a rancher by the time he was 12. He just didn't know how he'd get there. He ended up at Princeton, where he got randomly paired with a freshman roommate named Rob Lovelace, a Santa Barbara kid with a completely different upbringing. The two became close friends, and over the years Rob kept telling Grady that one day they'd run a ranch together. Grady would think to himself, "Rob, you don't know what that costs." Then grad school ended, Rob called, and the search began. It led them to Colorado, and to Rancho Largo. They had the dream at 20, and they're living it now. This is the origin story of Rancho Largo.

"More accuracy, more data, and more visibility." We chatted with Nigel Pannett from Compass Agri at AgFest Tasmania in Australia, and he summed up exactly why he uses Halter. Farming more accurately, growing more grass, and keeping stock fed and healthy! Until next year, AgFest 👋

Grady Grissom used to think it was all about deferral. Now he's not so sure. Before 2015, his graze periods at Rancho Largo in southern Colorado ran 10 days to two weeks, and his plant diversity was thriving. Then he added a second herd, his graze periods stretched to 30 or 45 days, and he watched his ranch go backwards ecologically. The same cows kept coming back to the same plants, damaging them, killing off roots, and slowly thinning out the land. He thought about doubling his electric fence, but he didn't want to look at more wire when he could be looking at wide open range. Rancho Largo sits in a wild place, and that open expanse is part of what makes it beautiful. That's a big part of why he moved to virtual fencing with Halter. Within a month, he'd shortened his graze periods, and for the last nine months he's been averaging one to two-day moves. He reckons there's another threshold somewhere between two weeks and two days where things don't just work, they work drastically better.

Covers are never even across a paddock, and relying on paddock averages can lead to over or under allocation. We've released a new feature on Halter so you can see different covers within the same paddock instantly, and draw breaks that more accurately match the feed available in each area. Watch to see how Marcus, a beef farmer in Waipukurau, New Zealand, is using Halter to allocate feed more accurately, and how carcass weights have gone from averaging around 360kg to closer to 500kg on his farm.

Grady Grissom ranches 14,000 acres of shortgrass prairie in southeast Colorado. When he started, he ran as many cattle as the land could hold, and his conception rate dropped to 80%. He cut the herd and spent the next several years learning what the land could actually carry, and by 2010 he was back at the same stocking rate he'd started with, only this time his conception rate was 95%. The thirty years in between are what shaped the way he ranches today. You can watch Grady's full story in episode 4 of 'A Halter Series' on our US YouTube channel. 🤠

Somebody forgot to tell Austin we'd gone direct to satellite. 🫤

Look up! Halter’s virtual fencing for beef is now powered by satellite. No towers or cell tower coverage needed. To the beef farmers and ranchers who have been waiting for virtual fencing that can go further, in remote areas, extensive beef country, public land, leased ground and more, we built this for you. Sky’s the limit now.

The Jespersen cows are eating their way across Nebraska one swath of milo at a time, and nobody had to touch a single wire to make it happen. 🫡

The Sandhills calving method can be one of the best tools in a cow-calf operation. It can also be a logistical nightmare to pull off without the right system. 🫠 Barb Downey of Downey Ranch shows us how they use Halter for a Sandhills move, turning a half-day job into a half-hour one.

Get planning, people! Barb Downey of Downey Ranch has a message for ranching families who haven't had the succession conversation yet. The next generation is watching how you adapt, and that might just include the technology you're willing to try. 😉

Beef cattle now grazing the ungrazeable with Halter’s virtual fencing collars in Queensland, Australia

Ever wondered what's possible with virtual fencing? Like grazing cornstalks, cover crops, standing forage that would otherwise go to waste. Ron Jespersen is changing that on his operation, running 450 head through daily cornstalk rotations. 🌽