Dairy Cow Fencing

Dairy Cow Fencing effective fencing system is essential for pasture-based dairy farming to control animal movement and meet short and long-term grazing management goals. The fencing system must be a combination of permanent and temporary fencing that is cost effective, easy to construct and maintain, safe for livestock, and provide the right level of containment to prevent escapes. The fence material should be durable, safe from entanglement, and free of sharp corners and edges.

High tensile smooth wire is a durable, low-cost option with the advantage of having fewer posts and less time to construct and repair compared to barbed or woven wire. Ensure the fence is well-tensioned and regularly checked to prevent entanglement and crimping. A joule rating of at least 2,000 volts is recommended. A battery or mains-powered energizer that is the appropriate size for the fence and prevailing conditions (weeds/grass on the wire, poor connections, small wire) will ensure adequate voltage.

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Pre-commercial prototype eShepherd virtual fence devices fitted to the necks of 30 early-lactation multiparous dairy cows were used to determine their ability to contain grazing dairy cattle in a 2.2-ha paddock during strip grazing by limiting the available pasture to the previous day’s residual (Figure 1). The VF device emits an audio tone when a cow approaches a VF boundary and an electrical pulse when the cow enters the exclusion zone. The device was found to be able to reliably contain grazing dairy cows and to do so over a 24-h grazing allocation. However, within-day variation in pasture utilization was observed between treatments and longer term studies will be required to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual fencing systems to impose more complex grazing strategies.