Farmers feed the world.

It’s the biggest job on earth, covering half of
all habitable land mass.

Why we exist

Farmers need to feed a growing world — but we can’t do this the way we’ve always done it.

We’ve seen firsthand the care and dedication farmers have for their land and animals.  We’ve also seen how agriculture, one of the oldest and most vital industries, has yet to receive the full benefits of modern technology.  This leaves enormous opportunity for farmers to unlock greater productivity and sustainability across their farms.


We believe pasture management holds the key.  Effective rotational grazing enables more efficient use of natural resources and increased productivity, while also enhancing soil health and improving root structures to sequester more carbon.  We don’t believe more productivity needs to come at the cost of sustainability.  We can do good for farmers, and the planet.

Meet our Farmers
207,000+

KM of virtual fences set in 2024. That’s five times around earth.

1000+

Halter is trusted by over 1,000 farmers and counting.

We help farmers maximise every square metre of their land.

How did it start?

Growing up on a 300-cow dairy farm in Matamata, Craig Piggott was all too familiar with the challenges farmers were facing.

“Born and bred in red bands, I understand the kind of hard work that comes from pouring yourself into something you believe in.”

“My fascination with how things work led me to study Engineering. Rocket Lab was the dream and working there was hugely inspiring. If they could build rockets and transform the space industry from New Zealand, why was no one bringing tech to ag? With my background in farming, I knew it was an industry ripe for disruption.

In 2016, I left my job, and took the plunge. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out, it’s really hard. I thought we could raise $150,000, hire one person, and have the first farm up and running. That was laughably wrong. But here we are—though with a few more people and a bit more money. And our ambition is only growing bigger—we're just getting started”

Milestones
How did we do it?

01Big Birds Big Moment

Pre-Series A, we had Big Bird (our cow), a remote (which was a Sistema tupperware lunchbox), a collar, and our IP—stored entirely in Chris Bloomfield’s head—the original Halter cow trainer. Progress was slow, so we set a challenge: in eight weeks, we’d fly to San Francisco. The pitch? A live demo where an investor would move Big Bird from halfway across the globe.

It was all or nothing. As Craig soared over the Pacific, we had the collective realisation that we’d overlooked the time zones. 9am in San Francisco, 3am in New Zealand—the middle of the night with a cow deep asleep.

Let’s set the scene. A floodlit paddock with Big Bird waiting (possibly still half asleep). “Pick a corner,” Craig said, from a meeting in San Francisco, and passed his laptop. And on cue, Big Bird did exactly what she was supposed to do, and moved to the chosen corner. This demo proved we could guide cows with just a collar, forming the core of Halter.

The largest and most stubborn cow we’ve ever met, Big Bird also had the patience of a saint, and our first milestone belongs to her.

02From Bath Mats to Bulletproof

To go from concept to reality, we needed to create durable hardware for our cows. Solar was the logical option to power our collars, but when Craig's initial solar panel calculations came back requiring a bath mat-sized panel for each collar, we knew we had a problem. That one was solved by hiring someone better at math…

The next challenge was finding a solar panel tough enough for a cow because the ones we had were breaking too easily. We figured out that the solar panel needed to withstand the energy equivalent to driving a golf ball off the tee.

Having explored many options with suppliers across the world, we eventually landed on using technology similar to bullet-proof glass. That wasn’t what we expected, but that’s life at a start-up—solving problems we didn't even know existed.

03First Install (worked out in the end!)

Once we had our collars functional and ready for their new home on a customer farm (and we'd convinced Frank to be our very first Halter farmer), we switched our focus to installing towers and getting the farm ready for "go-live".

The day before the installation was planned to go ahead, the company we'd lined up to construct the towers fell through, which was spanner in the works number 1. That wasn't going to stop us though—a few of the team jumped into a ute, picked up supplies in Auckland and headed down to the Waikato, and spent all night welding, drilling and building the towers by hand in Craig's dad's milking shed.

Once the towers were ready, we found our spanner number 2—the tower install sites on the customer farm were inaccessible to industrial trucks, so everything had to be done by hand, including lifting the towers into their respective positions.

We ran back out and purchased over 2000kg of concrete to mix, jugs to carry water by hand, and a wheelbarrow and many shovels to do this work manually. Talk about elbow grease. After a good few days of working dawn till dusk, a lot of laughter and plenty of sweat (sometimes coming out our eyes), we had our first farm installed.

Frank was so chuffed at the end, he even bought us a box of beers. We chalked this experience up as a massive win, and a massive learning curve.

04“Cali Fest”

When collars first started landing on New Zealand soil ready to be deployed onto a customer farm, they weren’t quite ready. They first had to be calibrated so that they knew the difference between North and South (quite critical when you’re moving a cow around the farm!). How did we calibrate them? Well, we invented a Calibration Festival.

Each time a new farm needed to be deployed, the entire company would cram into utes and head down to Morrinsville. We would get out into the paddock, and each and every collar would require a very specific series of movements for five minutes before the pretty colours flashed telling us it was done. Rinse and repeat for thousands of collars.

After a few of these, we nicknamed the events Cali Fest, and they always came with great snacks, an in-house DJ, and a short aftermath ‘function’. This was critical work, and it simply couldn’t be done without great music, great snacks, and a lot of great attitudes.

Eventually we worked out a way for the collars to arrive into New Zealand calibrated, and so saw the end of these much anticipated festivals. So long, Cali Fest, see you (hopefully not) soon.

05Winter vs. Halter

Our first winter with collars on cow was hardcore. We hadn’t yet worked out how to keep the batteries alive for longer than a couple of days, especially with no solar to power them up in the depths of winter. To keep up with our necessary pace of learning (spoiler alert: a very rapid pace), we transformed a shipping container in Morrinsville into a full-time collar charging station, and each frosty morning a different crew would swap hundreds of collars onto the chargers.

Nights were a flurry of activity at Auckland HQ as our Hardware team worked tirelessly to develop and manufacture new collar designs. Machines hummed (or screeched) through to the early hours, much to the annoyance of our neighbours who repeatedly called the cops with noise complaints.

Each and every morning in the Waikato, the team (two removing old collars and two fitting the new ones) ensured that the process was as seamless as possible, and that a cow never had a collar on her neck that wasn’t charged up and doing its job. This swapping system became a daily routine that year, with every member of the company stepping up to volunteer in this vital operation.

We made it through our first winter with a heap of learnings, a heap of memories, and even more respect for the early morning work required to keep a farm humming.

06“I’d retire from farming if I didn’t have Halter”

Our first winter with collars on cow was hardcore. We hadn’t yet worked out how to keep the batteries alive for longer than a couple of days, especially with no solar to power them up in the depths of winter. To keep up with our necessary pace of learning (spoiler alert: a very rapid pace), we transformed a shipping container in Morrinsville into a full-time collar charging station, and each frosty morning a different crew would swap hundreds of collars onto the chargers.

Nights were a flurry of activity at Auckland HQ as our Hardware team worked tirelessly to develop and manufacture new collar designs. Machines hummed (or screeched) through to the early hours, much to the annoyance of our neighbours who repeatedly called the cops with noise complaints.

Each and every morning in the Waikato, the team (two removing old collars and two fitting the new ones) ensured that the process was as seamless as possible, and that a cow never had a collar on her neck that wasn’t charged up and doing its job. This swapping system became a daily routine that year, with every member of the company stepping up to volunteer in this vital operation.

We made it through our first winter with a heap of learnings, a heap of memories, and even more respect for the early morning work required to keep a farm humming.

Milestones
Moments that got us here

01
Big Bird's Big Moment

Pre-Series A, we had Big Bird (our cow), a collar, and our team with some big ideas in their heads. Progress was slow, so we set a challenge: in eight weeks, we’d fly to San Francisco. The pitch? A live demo where an investor would see Big Bird listen and respond to cues from halfway across the globe and show what she'd learned.

It was all or nothing. As Craig soared over the Pacific, we had the collective realisation that we’d overlooked the time zones. 10am in San Francisco, 4am in New Zealand—not so fun for us, but almost milking time for Big Bird!

Let’s set the scene. A floodlit paddock with Big Bird chewing her cud, waiting for milking. From a meeting in San Francisco, Craig sent the cue from his laptop - time for milking! And Big Bird did exactly what she had learned to do - she walked towards the gate. We proved cows can understand cues from a collar, forming the core of Halter.

A legendary Halter cow - our first milestone belongs to Big Bird.

02
From Bath Mats to Bulletproof

To go from concept to reality, we needed to create durable hardware for our cows. Solar was the logical option to power our collars, but when Craig's initial solar panel calculations came back requiring a bath mat-sized panel for each collar, we knew we had a problem. That one was solved by hiring someone better at math…

The next challenge was finding a solar panel tough enough for a cow because the ones we had were breaking too easily. We figured out that the solar panel needed to withstand the energy equivalent to driving a golf ball off the tee.

Having explored many options with suppliers across the world, we eventually landed on using technology similar to bullet-proof glass. That wasn’t what we expected, but that’s life at a start-up—solving problems we didn't even know existed.

03
First Install (worked out in the end!)

Once we had our collars functional and ready for their new home on a customer farm (and we'd convinced someone to be our very first Halter farmer), we switched our focus to installing towers and getting the farm ready for "go-live".

The day before the installation was planned to go ahead, the company we'd lined up to construct the towers fell through, which was spanner in the works number 1. That wasn't going to stop us though—a few of the team jumped into a ute, picked up supplies in Auckland and headed down to the Waikato, and spent all night welding, drilling and building the towers by hand in Craig's dad's milking shed.

Once the towers were ready, we found our spanner number 2—the tower install sites on the customer farm were inaccessible to industrial trucks, so everything had to be done by hand, including lifting the towers into their respective positions.

We ran back out and purchased over 2000kg of concrete to mix, jugs to carry water by hand, and a wheelbarrow and many shovels to do this work manually. Talk about elbow grease. After a good few days of working dawn till dusk, a lot of laughter and plenty of sweat (sometimes coming out our eyes), we had our first farm installed.

Our first farmer was so chuffed at the end, he even bought us a box of beers. We chalked this experience up as a massive win, and a massive learning curve.

04
“Cali Fest”

When collars first started landing on New Zealand soil ready to be deployed onto a customer farm, they weren’t quite ready. They first had to be calibrated so that they knew the difference between North and South (quite critical when you’re moving a cow around the farm!). How did we calibrate them? Well, we invented a Calibration Festival.

Each time a new farm needed to be deployed, the entire company would cram into utes and head down to Morrinsville. We would get out into the paddock, and each and every collar would require a very specific series of movements for five minutes before the pretty colours flashed telling us it was done. Rinse and repeat for thousands of collars.

After a few of these, we nicknamed the events Cali Fest, and they always came with great snacks, an in-house DJ, and a short aftermath ‘function’. This was critical work, and it simply couldn’t be done without great music, great snacks, and a lot of great attitudes.

Eventually we worked out a way for the collars to arrive into New Zealand calibrated, and so saw the end of these much anticipated festivals. So long, Cali Fest, see you (hopefully not) soon.

05
Winter vs. Halter

Our first winter with collars on cow was hardcore. We hadn’t yet worked out how to keep the batteries alive for longer than a couple of days, especially with less solar to power them up in the depths of winter. To keep up with our necessary pace of learning (spoiler alert: a very rapid pace), we transformed a shipping container in Morrinsville into a full-time collar charging station, and each frosty morning a different crew would swap hundreds of collars onto the chargers.

Nights were a flurry of activity at Auckland HQ as our Hardware team worked tirelessly to develop and manufacture new collar designs. Machines hummed (or screeched) through to the early hours, much to the annoyance of our neighbours who repeatedly called the cops with noise complaints.

Each and every morning in the Waikato, the team (two removing old collars and two fitting the new ones) ensured that the process was as seamless as possible, and that a cow never had a collar on her neck that wasn’t charged up and doing its job. This swapping system became a daily routine that year, with every member of the company stepping up to volunteer in this vital operation.

We made it through our first winter with a heap of learnings, a heap of memories, and even more respect for the early morning work required to keep a farm humming.

06
“I’d retire from farming if I didn’t have Halter”

Our Series B raise was fuelled by the unwavering support of our first five Halter farmers. We believe their enthusiasm for Halter helped us secure funding to take Halter from five farms, to thousands of farmers.

One of the original adopters moved to France and was able to maintain visibility of his farm (being well looked after by a farm manager) in Te Awamutu from a villa in the French countryside. C'est bon!

Another, looking straight down the barrel of a camera, told us with a straight face, "I'd retire from farming if I didn't have Halter."

One of our first customers even bought a personalised plate that simply read "Halter." We wondered why we didn’t think of that first, but then again, it’s quite a story for a farmer to show his support in such a way.

It was a sign that things were starting to work. Most importantly, it showed that people truly believed in our product and our mission. And that’s what it’s all about.

Our Leaders

Working at Halter is more than just a job.  They wake up every day and move the needle towards our mission to make farming more productive and sustainable, and impact our farmers lives.

With diverse backgrounds and expertise across technology, agriculture and business, our leaders are committed to transforming the future of farming.

Craig Piggott
CEO & Founder

Mark MacLeod-Smith
Chief Operating Officer

Andrew Fraser
President

Andrea Quinn
Vice President Go-To-Market Operations

Andrew McLaren
Vice President of Product & Engineering

Anisha Tutaia
Head of Customer Support

Benjamin Sweney
Head of Product Engineering

Brad Terpstra
Head of Comms

Charlie Baker
Vice President Growth

Dugan O'Donnell
Head of Production

Gus Hewitt
Country Manager NZ & Tas

Helen Moore
Director of Strategy &
Growth

Larissa Naidoo
Senior People &
Performance Partner

Mark Weir
Head of Engineering - Data

Peter Nieuwenhuizen
Director of Animal

Sophie Stanley
Head of Digital Sales

Toby Hurley
Head of Pasture

Steve Crowhurst
Partnerships Manager (NZ)

Justin Wells
Country Manager - USA

Richard Power
Head of Hardware

Brett Good
Head of Tasmania

Sean Hammond
Head of Queensland