Derry goat farmer tests fenceless tech at Magic
Shawn Cunningham | Sep 17, 2024 | Comments 6
By Shawn Cunningham
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC
Goats come cascading down the mountain to Braxmeier. Photos by Shawn Cunningham
After a couple more yells, the herd comes cascading down the mountain along the trees to greet Braxmeier, owner of Slippery Slope Goats in Londonderry. But unlike the last time The Telegraph visited the goats – when a smaller herd helped clear the Brookside Hiking Trail of invasive barberry bushes – this time there is no fence. Instead, the goats are controlled by Braxmeier via a phone app that lays out the grazing boundaries and communicates with GPS collars worn by the goats.
Braxmeier points to a grazed area. The green areas are ferns which the goats don’t eat.
In previous vegetation management jobs, Braxmeier would have set up an electrified fence to contain her goats, then built another fence to move them to further graze. That work was labor intensive and limited the area where the goats’ grazing area. And that made it more cumbersome, expensive and, thus, less sustainable.
But this summer, Braxmeier and her goats are taking part in a pilot project sponsored by the Agritech Institute for Small Farms, which, its website says, works to identify technologies to help small farms “stay financially viable and mitigate climate change.”
The phone app allows a herder to define the area, move goats and monitor their movements – including the occasional escapee
Dan Smith, who founded the institute with former Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Albee, told The Telegraph last week that the Agritech Institute evolved from the organization that disbanded in 2022 after putting on Strolling of the Heifers in Brattleboro for nearly 20 years.
The Agritech pilot program is evaluating the use of Norwegian “No Fence” collars that allow a farmer to remotely set the perimeter of a grazing area, moving the herd from place to place without using fencing.
For the past month, Braxmeier’s goats have been working about 60 acres on Magic Mountain, grazing in areas where mowing equipment can’t be used. On this day, about 125 goats are on 5.8 hectares, according to the Norwegian equipment. That’s 14 acres, and physically containing an area of that size would take thousands of feet of fencing, some in areas that are steep and hard to contain.
At night, the goats are herded into an electric fence pen to protect them from predators. They also receive additional feed to keep their weight up while they climb up and down the mountain. Braxmeier also brings water up to the enclosure.
Goats in Norwegian collars
Braxmeier shows the collar worn by adult goats. The kids don’t have collars.
The phone app gives a herder an aerial view of the area and the goats and provides individual data about the activity of each individual goat. If one particular goat needs to be found in a large herd, the app will play a Norwegian lullaby from that goat’s collar, making it easy to locate.
Elowen gets a snuggle and a scratch
Braxmeier says most goats stay within the boundaries, but admits there are a few “naughty goats” who have walked through the electric pulse to do things like follow a Magic Mountain worker around. When that happens, the app alerts Braxmeier, who then returns the offender to the herd.
Agritech Institute’s Smith notes that the pilot program includes grazing management for cattle and goats in addition to managing vegetation such as when Braxmeier’s goats removed invasive knotweed from the banks of the West River. He says that the work of managing utility rights of way and ski areas can demonstrate whether using the collars will be worth the cost of the technology. For Braxmeier, buying the pilot project collars would be around $35,000 for her herd of 125 goats. While she books her goats a year in advance, she will have to work out how long it will take to offset that cost.
The next job was under the Black Line lift
Smith says he wants to find the funding to keep the pilot going another two years to gather more data to get a clearer picture of cost savings and explore financial assistance for the technology.
He also says that the goats help utilities and ski areas reduce their carbon footprint. Pointing to the use of mowers, weed whackers, chain saws and chippers Smith says he is working on a monitoring tool to assess the amount of carbon saved by grazing goats.
For now, Braxmeier’s goats are heading north to munch their way along two electric utility rights of way with the possibility of another ski area gig before the snow flies.
Filed Under: Featured • Latest News
I definitely have a comment. My daughter has worked very hard these past years taking care of goats. What she is doing is amazing! She would never harm a goat. Let them test the
monitors. It is not hurting any animals. I think this is a fantastic project!!!! Go Aimee!! Great job!!
Dear Patricia,
This awful system is literally cruel on purpose.
The mechanism by which these devices function is punishment, and the ever present threat of punishment. If it was a pleasant experience for the goats, it would not be effective, now would it?
The whole thing relies on hurting the animals enough to change their behavior, and constantly threatening to hurt them with unpleasant stimuli, which evokes a similar, conditioned, fear response, as an electric shock often follows that negative stimuli. The goats may never even work out why it is happening, in that case, it’s just a never ending campaign of random cruelty.
Nobody would ever dream of strapping one of these barbaric devices to a child, who couldn’t understand the concept of geofencing, then let them loose in a field with invisible boundaries, that constantly change and hurt them. Doing this to an animal should be no different.
Just put up an actual fence, it’s really not that much effort, humans have been doing it for literally centuries. I understand that fences are good for keeping predators out too, which this inhumane system also totally fails at BTW.
Dear Evan, do you know goats? I appreciate your animal protection concern however there is no cruelty involved here. The goats are free to range on many acres of luscious pasture that cannot be accessed by conventional machinery. Is this a plus for the environment? Yes it is. And also for the goats. The “shock” collars you take offense with, are a very mild sensation that a few goats MIGHT experience should they try to get lost on a mountain. It is certainly not cruelty. Unless you are fully experienced in understanding this particular positive environmentally operation, you should refrain from negative comments about it. Unbeknownst to you, the goats are extremely happy grazing in this manner.
I encountered the ENTIRE goat herd a couple weeks back – they followed me from Sunshine Corner down to hole 18 of the disc golf course. Not sure if they were escapees, but they certainly enjoyed our journey down the mountain. Not being familiar with goats, it was a bit unsettling at first. Despite trying to divert my path from the herd, they relentlessly followed and seemed to enjoy my company. As I neared the bottom of the mountain, I wasn’t sure if they’d continue to follow and began devising a plan to leave them on the deck of the Black Line. Thankfully, it didn’t come down to that!
While shock collars are being built with fancy, futuristic new features like GPS and geofencing, which may make it easier for the farmer, it is in my opinion, and the opinion of Humane Society of the United States, American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, to name a few, cruel, unnecessary, and physiologically damaging to the animal being punished.
The Agritech Institute For Smallfarms is putting an awful lot of effort into rebranding shock collars for these budding agritech companies, and is trying very hard to color these archaic devices as new and futuristic, but the mechanism by which they work is still punishment, and the ever present threat of punishment, by electric shock.
This is not “the future” and these devices should never be considered a suitable substitute for an actual fence, lead, or leash, and should not ever be considered suitable for use on public property, for both ethical, and practical purposes. They are often ineffective, and impose unneeded psychological stress, including severe anxiety and displaced aggression. Additionally, individual animals vary in their temperaments and pain thresholds; a shock that seems mild to one animal may be severe to another.
Unlike a real, physical fence, which the animal can actually see and avoid, the anxiety and confusion caused by the constant threat of punishment, and repeated shocks, especially for nebulous reasons, like a constantly changing, imaginary border, drawn on a cellphone map, can lead to negative, permanent changes in the brain, heart and respiration rate, behavior, and gastrointestinal disorders. Electronic collars can also malfunction, either administering nonstop shocks or delivering no shocks at all.
Shock collars have already been banned in Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Quebec, Wales and Scotland.These awful devices should be outlawed here as well in my opinion, we already have much better, kinder ways to manage livestock and pets, and the animals shouldn’t suffer because people can’t be bothered to put up an actual fence, or use a leash.
This is amazing and the direction that we should be headed in! Incredible progress!!!