Derry goat farmer tests fenceless tech at Magic

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

More than three quarters of the way up Magic Mountain on a sunny September afternoon, Aimee Braxmeier sets up a yell. From up one of the mountain’s steep ski trails – far enough to be out of sight – comes bleating of goats.

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.

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.”

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

Invented in Norway and widely used in Europe, the collars are programmed from a cellphone. When a goat nears the boundary of the grazing patch, it hears a series of eight rising tones that warns the goat to back away. If the goat gets to the boundary, the collar gives off a “mild, but effective electric pulse” according to the No Fence website.

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.

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.

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.