Strip grazing with and without Collie
Before we had Collie, we were already active strip grazers. It's a world of difference, of course, because, to put it bluntly, it was just a lot of faffing about with all those electric wires. I reckon it easily saves us an hour a day. If you're keen on strip grazing with physical wires, you're moving them three or four times a day. You quickly lose 15 or 20 minutes each time. Besides that, I'm away a lot during the day doing landscaping work. Look, if someone else was at home, we'd have to agree: can you go out and move the wire in the meantime? Now I can just keep an eye on things remotely and move the wire myself. I'm the one managing the grazing. Now I can keep control of it remotely, and I don't have to ask my wife or the kids to do it. Yeah, that's a massive relief.
More efficient and flexible grazing
I can manage the grazing much more efficiently now. You're much more flexible to just jump over to another paddock. For example, we've got paddocks that are 400 to 500 metres deep. For grass growth, you sometimes want to split them halfway, so they get half with a fresh bite, and the rest gets a rest. With a physical wire, you've got to walk all the way out into the field again. Now, with Collie, you just draw a line across it and it's sorted. It's much easier to just alter a few square metres.
Fetching the herd: Calm and dominance
Bringing the cows in is much calmer. We've got horned cows in the herd. And when we fetch them, they walk in single file. If a dominant cow at the front stops because she simply doesn't feel like moving, you can push the cows behind her all you want, but they won't go past her. With Collie, you don't get that issue. All those cows get a stimulus to keep walking. It does take a bit longer, and you have to take your time, because the system gives them 5.5 seconds of standing still before they're stimulated again. Now, when we fetch them, you see a long, drawn-out string of cows. They all walk at their own pace. And the lower-ranking cows just keep well away from the dominant ones.
Integrating new heifers
That was new for us as well. After the initial setup, we just chucked a few heifers in with the rest. They just went along with the herd straight away. The advice was to put them in for the first day without turning the collar on, but we just switched it on immediately. I haven't seen anything daft happen; they just figured it out themselves by walking with the herd.
Practicalities: Ditch jumpers, ground-nesting birds, and calf at foot
A specific issue for our farm: we suffer from ditch jumpers. It's an accepted thing in our herd, but wherever a ditch is slightly narrower, 5% of my herd will jump it. Before Collie, I had to fence off all the ditch banks. Now, I just draw a small zone across the ditch. So the ditch-jumping cows are still allowed to cross, but then they hit a zone about four metres wide. That's exactly how we've tackled that.
