Our 'No Fence' system for grazing the moors

You might have been thinking - what are those things around the cows necks? - Good question... we  are trialling a system from Norway that uses GPS to map a 'virtual' boundary which communicates to these collars on our cows. When they come within 2-3m of this boundary an audio warning is issued that gets faster and higher, if they push through this they receive an electric pulse on the neck which turns them away.  After training them to this system for a few days they respond to the audio nearly every time.

Here we are preparing the collars to put on our cows.

Why we wanted to do this:

-    to enable us to graze 40 acres of moorland near Chun Quoit without the need to enclose the area with     electric or permanent fencing 

-    to enable this moorland to become a dynamic ecosystem once more by allowing a keystone species,     the cow, to graze it again 

-    to save and restore this diminishing and valuable habitat with it's unique fauna and flora

Here they are on Higher Downs with Chun Quoit just visible in the background

Just checking that they can drink with the collars on.