Could virtual fences work without giving cows electric shocks?

C. Umstatter; C. Tailleur; D. Ross; M.J. Haskell

Could virtual fences work without giving cows electric shocks?

In: Precision livestock farming '09

Authors:

C. Umstatter

C. Umstatter ¹Scottish Agricultural College, Sustainable Livestock Systems, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, United Kingdom; christina.umstatter@sac.ac.uk

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C. Tailleur

C. Tailleur ²AgroParisTech, 16 rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France

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D. Ross

D. Ross ¹Scottish Agricultural College, Sustainable Livestock Systems, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, United Kingdom; christina.umstatter@sac.ac.uk

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, and

M.J. Haskell

M.J. Haskell ¹Scottish Agricultural College, Sustainable Livestock Systems, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, United Kingdom; christina.umstatter@sac.ac.uk

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 159–168

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086866632_020

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Virtual fences could have many positive effects on livestock farming and nature conservation: reduction of fencing and maintenance costs, feasibility to fence in difficult terrain, increased flexibility, no adverse effects on wildlife to name just a few. However, the approaches at the moment do all include electric shock. This might have welfare implications and so-called shock collars for dogs are already banned in Wales and in some European countries. Therefore, our objective was to determine whether a sound cue could replace electric shock as an aversive stimulus in a virtual fence. We ran a pilot study consisting of three different experiments. We exposed a group of eight cows in a pen to 20 different sounds in a random order and recorded the responses. From those results we identified nine sounds which gave the greatest alerting response. In the second experiment we used seven of the cows for the treatment wearing a neck-collar with attached loudspeakers. The cows were exposed individually to the nine sounds in three sessions. From these results we identified two sounds, which gave the highest response. Sound 1 scored on average 3.7 on a scale from 0 (low) to 5 (high) and Sound 2 scored 3.1. In comparison, the control sound scored 0.5. These two sounds were then used in a paddock trial on eight naïve cows. We established a virtual fence across a paddock and the cow was played the test cue as she approached the line. The success rate was defined by cows turning away from the virtual fence line after the cue was triggered. In this trial, 53% of the cows responded successful to the cues played (Sound 1: 49% and Sound 2: 58%). However, more research needs to be done to develop a non-shock system, which could sufficiently replace fences.

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Precision livestock farming '09

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086866632

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 30 Oct 2009

Subjects
- Life Sciences
  - General
  - Animal & Veterinary

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Could virtual fences work without giving cows electric shocks?

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Precision livestock farming '09

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