Virtual fence (VF) technologies can aid cattle producers in applying grazing management for land resource objectives. Acute stress and animal welfare are important factors to consider when adopting VF on rangelands. VF did not cause increased heart rate (HR) to mature, lactating beef cows when receiving audio or electric cues during a 30-minute period. Increased HR was observed when cattle interacted with the electric cue boundary, but HR typically returned to levels observed during a control period within 30 seconds to 4 minutes. Overall, VF caused minimal acute stress to the mature cows with calves and cattle learned to respond to audio cue warnings and avoid electric cues after being trained.
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Dozler et al. (2024) studied this question.
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