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I'm someone that has actually worked with cows. Fences work, really really well. And cows are quite easy animals to herd. They have a natural tendency to jus

I'm someone that has actually worked with cows. Fences work, really really well. And cows are quite easy animals to herd. They have a natural tendency to just follow along with the group. You can literally move hundreds of head of cattle with about 4 people (I've done it). There is some value in collecting biometrics and location information. But the entire "move the cow with a vibrator" thing isn't an innovation I think any rancher really wants or needs. I just have a hard time seeing this as being something that actually solves a need. The "20% savings" seems really fishy. The majority of the labor for a herd is feeding them.

jasonwatkinspdx 7mo ago
Yeah, any time something farming related comes up here there's a bunch of comments from tech bros who clearly think farmers are just idiots waiting around to be rescued by the tech bros' superior understanding of what farming is and what technology it needs, based on...
Fricken 7mo ago
Possibly you're just not cynical enough to appreciate the need it could solve. Get it working on cows then move on to people. This is Peter Thiel we're talking about.
- DonHopkins 7mo ago
  Maybe Bryon Noem is one of his test subjects, and he was testing out Thiel's human milking machine.
  - actionfromafar 7mo ago
    Was that a joke or does this machine exist? It's impossible to guess these days.
trueno 7mo ago
these big names at the top (thiel, musk, etc) ive really just started to tune them out. they're all bored, have too much money, and are obsessed with futurism & getting people to follow them into their lame visions of the future at all costs. they're p much entirely decoupled from the economic plights you and i face, they just play a different game altogether and any potential gamble for savings is never framed as a "this can make things better for everyone" but more or less just funneled through ... uh, i dont know shareholder opportunity or something. i don't doubt there's plenty of upside in agriculture/farming to be had with technology, i just no longer find it meaningful when people from this social class are trying talking about them. something is really off putting now when silicon valley types try to be authority figures on completely different industries, it's super presumptuous. think they've lost the plot quite a bit here, i dont think anyone should be interested in their ideas of the future at all. they've done enough damage. all these dudes ever needed was to go to therapy, all we need now is for them to leave us alone. the incessant need to be the guy with the big ideas these guys are constantly displaying is just so exhausting at this point. wish they'd just go buy a beach and drink liquor out of coconuts and disappear, no one needs to move fast and break things and shake cows
- defrost 7mo ago
  This isn't a Thiel / Musk idea though .. not in the slightest. This is a decade old New Zealand idea, spawned ground up from dairy farmer adjacent New Zealanders, that has recently sought funding and are now being backed by Thiel et al. I'm saddened to see them now being in the pocket of SV venture caps .. good for them for fast, easy, large amounts of development and FU money .. but ultimately likely a loss for the AU/NZ dairy industries who will wake up to being controlled via subscription services piped through offshore clouds and having their owns cows being held to ransom and potentially forced to walk off cliffs by bored hackers or indignant Iranians.
grosswait 7mo ago
Once you get them together, sure, but it appears from TFA that this is about gathering them from mountain meadows or other far flung environs. A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site. These are operations that don’t use fences. The article mentions this is a NZ company, but the American West would have a similar issue where ranchers can run cattle on land leased from BLM. I would imagine Australia would have a similar problem to solve.
- alterom 7mo ago
  > A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site [sic]. Are you.. mansplaining how herds work to a cow farmer, because you've read an article on HN?
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    This is probably peak HN. Defending a startup device against its very customers! Knowing the perversity of the world it’ll sell millions for unknown reasons. (An argument that it could Defence the west would be a better one, removing herd fences could have value for wildlife).
    - alterom 7mo ago
      >An argument that it could Defence the west would be a better one Ah! It just hit me: of course! This is just another one of Peter Thiel's defence ventures! :D
- bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  It's called a herd for a reason. Usually if you've found one cow you've found them all. In the wild any cow with genes for aloofness quickly got culled by predators. The exceptions are the lame & sick ones, but no fancy gadget is going to bring them in; you've got to take a truck to them.
  - 7mo ago
MichaelBosworth 7mo ago
Why do you think that, per the article, one million cattle are wearing these collars?
- cogman10 7mo ago
  I'd have guessed the biometrics and location information was the most useful part. But as others have pointed out these are primarily for dairy cows, which is pretty different from raising beef cattle (which is what I did). There is a need to twice daily gather the cows to have them milked. And the pasture rotation is much more of an involved process than what we needed to deal with. We just plopped a gaint bale of hay down for the cows to munch on.
bluGill 7mo ago
Fences need to be maintained and are not always where you want them. Cows are big, mostly they are gentle but they can accidentally kill you without trying. Pasture rotation is a big thing but that increases labor costs. Some ranchers love these because they enable things they should do but won't.
aunty_helen 7mo ago
My brothers a dairy farmer in NZ and uses this. Nz farmers will milk twice a day, early morning and afternoon. In the middle of the day the cows return to their paddock from the morning. In the evening they’re moved to a new paddock. Grass consumption is the aim of the game. If you let cows out on a full paddock for the day they’ll partially graze and then starve themselves (relatively speaking) in the afternoon. This is bad for milk production and also pasture quality for the next rotation. The solution to this is to set a break, a temporary electric fence in the middle of the paddock. So, they arrive to half a paddock then in the morning the farm worker takes it down for the afternoon and sets it up in the next paddock for the night. Probably takes 30-45 minutes depending on paddock size, weather and enthusiasm of the farm hand. x2 for 2 herds, 7 days a week for 8 months a year. Now, my brother just draws a line on a map and it takes care of itself.
- cogman10 7mo ago
  That could be the big difference. Our herd was for beef which is definitely a lot more hands off vs dairy farming.
  - aunty_helen 7mo ago
    Yea the cost of these, single digit dollars per head per month, really only works out on intensive farms. Halter are moving into the US market, but I’m not sure what the value prop is for ranches. My brother loves it though. It cut costs including farm bike costs as they’re no longer idling a bike behind them on the lane.
  - ikidd 7mo ago
    This applies well enough with beef. You still want to maximize pasture rotation and quick moves improve feed quality and speeds recovery between grazing. Source: have 320 Angus/Simmental pairs. Working on an opensource cow collar (agopencollar.com)
bryanlarsen 7mo ago
I think the advantage is being able to move the cows on a daily basis. If I had to guess, the 20% savings comes from rotation grazing. Rotation grazing is a lot easier on your pasture, allowing you to have more cows per acre. Rotation grazing can easily be done manually -- it doesn't take much training before moving cows between paddocks is as easy as opening the gate between the two paddocks and yelling out "I've put your tasty bribe in the next paddock, come and get it". Well that's not what you yell at them, but that's what they hear. But just because it's easy if you do it daily it quickly adds up to a lot of hours. And the small paddocks of rotation grazing take a lot of expensive wire.
anenefan 7mo ago
As far as the product is at the moment, it's not that clear - [1] they're not saying much apart from noise, sounds, or "how it actually works" - I see instead cotton candy pages - the sort of stuff not mentioning the important stuff but rather touting a chorus of AI This sort of site page promoting what sets them apart - might work for some high end cattle managers that don't have a hard or long background in cattle management and more have a business only background. For those who have been in the agriculture industry here in Australia I doubt many would recognise Halter as a brand of product that has something to do with farming cattle as leading; when Gallagher would surely be recognised by the farmers here who have a bit of age on them and around the industry for some time. [To put in context, Gallagher for most cattle folk in Australia would be synonymous in familiarity as IBM or mainframe for most HN readers] Gallagher does have a virtual fencing system as well, [2], and for any perspective customers, clearly inform in regard to the basics or premise of their e-shepherd system. Noise to prompt ... but eventually if ignored electrical stimulation - yeah that works Virtual fencing is an untapped market, even if one is not aiming for the whole herd, but just as a representative of the herd, or perhaps the ring leaders and trouble makers. I'm not sure too many run of the mill cattle farmers in my parts would appreciate the cattle being monitored via AI or even systems that are probably at some point going to be subscription based or require online access to function [3] I like real fences but I do like the idea of an adjustable virtual fence, virtual drover via a collar, but as someone (in Queensland, Aust.) who has seen the issues with a supposedly unobtrusive NLIS tag, where a small percentage get snagged and pull out, the idea having to chase up a collar which has stopped working or later found the beast has actually managed to lose it somewhere ... replacement costs would need to be low. What I would like to see is a programmable cattle minding drone solution (flying shepherd) with their own solar power recharging stations - ideally not only mind the herd, but arseholes who've ignored the biosecurity or no entry signage [1] https://www.halterhq.com/our-technology https://www.halterhq.com/our-technology [2] https://am.gallagher.com/en-AU/Solutions/eShepherd/ https://am.gallagher.com/en-AU/Solutions/eShepherd/ [3] https://4tags.com.au/shop/grazertrack-cattle-collar-kit/ https://4tags.com.au/shop/grazertrack-cattle-collar-kit/

jasonwatkinspdx 7mo ago

Yeah, any time something farming related comes up here there's a bunch of comments from tech bros who clearly think farmers are just idiots waiting around to be rescued by the tech bros' superior understanding of what farming is and what technology it needs, based on...

Fricken 7mo ago

Possibly you're just not cynical enough to appreciate the need it could solve. Get it working on cows then move on to people. This is Peter Thiel we're talking about.

DonHopkins 7mo ago
Maybe Bryon Noem is one of his test subjects, and he was testing out Thiel's human milking machine.
- actionfromafar 7mo ago
  Was that a joke or does this machine exist? It's impossible to guess these days.

trueno 7mo ago

these big names at the top (thiel, musk, etc) ive really just started to tune them out. they're all bored, have too much money, and are obsessed with futurism & getting people to follow them into their lame visions of the future at all costs. they're p much entirely decoupled from the economic plights you and i face, they just play a different game altogether and any potential gamble for savings is never framed as a "this can make things better for everyone" but more or less just funneled through ... uh, i dont know shareholder opportunity or something. i don't doubt there's plenty of upside in agriculture/farming to be had with technology, i just no longer find it meaningful when people from this social class are trying talking about them. something is really off putting now when silicon valley types try to be authority figures on completely different industries, it's super presumptuous. think they've lost the plot quite a bit here, i dont think anyone should be interested in their ideas of the future at all. they've done enough damage. all these dudes ever needed was to go to therapy, all we need now is for them to leave us alone. the incessant need to be the guy with the big ideas these guys are constantly displaying is just so exhausting at this point. wish they'd just go buy a beach and drink liquor out of coconuts and disappear, no one needs to move fast and break things and shake cows

defrost 7mo ago
This isn't a Thiel / Musk idea though .. not in the slightest. This is a decade old New Zealand idea, spawned ground up from dairy farmer adjacent New Zealanders, that has recently sought funding and are now being backed by Thiel et al. I'm saddened to see them now being in the pocket of SV venture caps .. good for them for fast, easy, large amounts of development and FU money .. but ultimately likely a loss for the AU/NZ dairy industries who will wake up to being controlled via subscription services piped through offshore clouds and having their owns cows being held to ransom and potentially forced to walk off cliffs by bored hackers or indignant Iranians.

grosswait 7mo ago

Once you get them together, sure, but it appears from TFA that this is about gathering them from mountain meadows or other far flung environs. A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site. These are operations that don’t use fences. The article mentions this is a NZ company, but the American West would have a similar issue where ranchers can run cattle on land leased from BLM. I would imagine Australia would have a similar problem to solve.

alterom 7mo ago
> A herd could be spread over thousands of acres, canyons, mountains, all sorts of places to be out of site [sic]. Are you.. mansplaining how herds work to a cow farmer, because you've read an article on HN?
- bombcar 7mo ago
  This is probably peak HN. Defending a startup device against its very customers! Knowing the perversity of the world it’ll sell millions for unknown reasons. (An argument that it could Defence the west would be a better one, removing herd fences could have value for wildlife).
  - alterom 7mo ago
    >An argument that it could Defence the west would be a better one Ah! It just hit me: of course! This is just another one of Peter Thiel's defence ventures! :D
bryanlarsen 7mo ago
It's called a herd for a reason. Usually if you've found one cow you've found them all. In the wild any cow with genes for aloofness quickly got culled by predators. The exceptions are the lame & sick ones, but no fancy gadget is going to bring them in; you've got to take a truck to them.
- 7mo ago

MichaelBosworth 7mo ago

Why do you think that, per the article, one million cattle are wearing these collars?

cogman10 7mo ago
I'd have guessed the biometrics and location information was the most useful part. But as others have pointed out these are primarily for dairy cows, which is pretty different from raising beef cattle (which is what I did). There is a need to twice daily gather the cows to have them milked. And the pasture rotation is much more of an involved process than what we needed to deal with. We just plopped a gaint bale of hay down for the cows to munch on.

bluGill 7mo ago

Fences need to be maintained and are not always where you want them. Cows are big, mostly they are gentle but they can accidentally kill you without trying. Pasture rotation is a big thing but that increases labor costs. Some ranchers love these because they enable things they should do but won't.

aunty_helen 7mo ago

My brothers a dairy farmer in NZ and uses this. Nz farmers will milk twice a day, early morning and afternoon. In the middle of the day the cows return to their paddock from the morning. In the evening they’re moved to a new paddock. Grass consumption is the aim of the game. If you let cows out on a full paddock for the day they’ll partially graze and then starve themselves (relatively speaking) in the afternoon. This is bad for milk production and also pasture quality for the next rotation. The solution to this is to set a break, a temporary electric fence in the middle of the paddock. So, they arrive to half a paddock then in the morning the farm worker takes it down for the afternoon and sets it up in the next paddock for the night. Probably takes 30-45 minutes depending on paddock size, weather and enthusiasm of the farm hand. x2 for 2 herds, 7 days a week for 8 months a year. Now, my brother just draws a line on a map and it takes care of itself.

cogman10 7mo ago
That could be the big difference. Our herd was for beef which is definitely a lot more hands off vs dairy farming.
- aunty_helen 7mo ago
  Yea the cost of these, single digit dollars per head per month, really only works out on intensive farms. Halter are moving into the US market, but I’m not sure what the value prop is for ranches. My brother loves it though. It cut costs including farm bike costs as they’re no longer idling a bike behind them on the lane.
- ikidd 7mo ago
  This applies well enough with beef. You still want to maximize pasture rotation and quick moves improve feed quality and speeds recovery between grazing. Source: have 320 Angus/Simmental pairs. Working on an opensource cow collar (agopencollar.com)

bryanlarsen 7mo ago

I think the advantage is being able to move the cows on a daily basis. If I had to guess, the 20% savings comes from rotation grazing. Rotation grazing is a lot easier on your pasture, allowing you to have more cows per acre. Rotation grazing can easily be done manually -- it doesn't take much training before moving cows between paddocks is as easy as opening the gate between the two paddocks and yelling out "I've put your tasty bribe in the next paddock, come and get it". Well that's not what you yell at them, but that's what they hear. But just because it's easy if you do it daily it quickly adds up to a lot of hours. And the small paddocks of rotation grazing take a lot of expensive wire.

anenefan 7mo ago

As far as the product is at the moment, it's not that clear - [1] they're not saying much apart from noise, sounds, or "how it actually works" - I see instead cotton candy pages - the sort of stuff not mentioning the important stuff but rather touting a chorus of AI This sort of site page promoting what sets them apart - might work for some high end cattle managers that don't have a hard or long background in cattle management and more have a business only background. For those who have been in the agriculture industry here in Australia I doubt many would recognise Halter as a brand of product that has something to do with farming cattle as leading; when Gallagher would surely be recognised by the farmers here who have a bit of age on them and around the industry for some time. [To put in context, Gallagher for most cattle folk in Australia would be synonymous in familiarity as IBM or mainframe for most HN readers] Gallagher does have a virtual fencing system as well, [2], and for any perspective customers, clearly inform in regard to the basics or premise of their e-shepherd system. Noise to prompt ... but eventually if ignored electrical stimulation - yeah that works Virtual fencing is an untapped market, even if one is not aiming for the whole herd, but just as a representative of the herd, or perhaps the ring leaders and trouble makers. I'm not sure too many run of the mill cattle farmers in my parts would appreciate the cattle being monitored via AI or even systems that are probably at some point going to be subscription based or require online access to function [3] I like real fences but I do like the idea of an adjustable virtual fence, virtual drover via a collar, but as someone (in Queensland, Aust.) who has seen the issues with a supposedly unobtrusive NLIS tag, where a small percentage get snagged and pull out, the idea having to chase up a collar which has stopped working or later found the beast has actually managed to lose it somewhere ... replacement costs would need to be low. What I would like to see is a programmable cattle minding drone solution (flying shepherd) with their own solar power recharging stations - ideally not only mind the herd, but arseholes who've ignored the biosecurity or no entry signage [1] https://www.halterhq.com/our-technology https://www.halterhq.com/our-technology [2] https://am.gallagher.com/en-AU/Solutions/eShepherd/ https://am.gallagher.com/en-AU/Solutions/eShepherd/ [3] https://4tags.com.au/shop/grazertrack-cattle-collar-kit/ https://4tags.com.au/shop/grazertrack-cattle-collar-kit/