Two months after unveiling a major upgrade to its beef product, Halter farmers are already on track for major production gains and additional grass growth.
“Beef Pro’’ was rolled out by the virtual fencing pioneer alongside a world-first move to connect its smart collars directly to satellite in partnership with OneNZ, powered by Starlink. Since then, in New Zealand alone, 500 beef farms have joined Halter’s satellite solution, with 185 farms on the new beef product.
Josh Townsend, Halter’s Country Director for New Zealand, says beef farmers are rapidly moving beyond virtual fencing to take full advantage of pasture and animal management tools dairy farms have leveraged for years. He says it’s a level-set for the industry.
“Kiwi dairy farmers are world-renowned pasture managers, and for five years have been incredible users of Halter; now for our beef farmers, it’s their day in the sun,” says Townsend.
The product combines feed demand and grazing planning tools, satellite forage signals, grazing intensity heat maps, behaviour monitoring, and automated grazing records - so the same system that moves cattle also helps farmers plan, measure and improve.
Beef operations can quantify what their herds need vs what their land can support, have this data drive planning, and build a record of how each grazing performed. Wasted forage from under-grazing and over-grazing becomes the main prize; every percentage point of utilization captured back compounds.
“Everything else - time savings, animal oversight, compliance records and replaced tools - stacks on top.”
Beef farms see production gains
Matt Wyeth, owner/operator at Spring Valley beef farm in Masterton, believes Beef Pro could bring beef farmers in line with the pasture precision their dairy counterparts are known for.
“Certainly we’re catching them up fast. Dairy farmers are typically ahead of us because they have more chance for income per hectare, but Halter has given us a giant leap forward and is allowing us to be great pasture managers too.
“We’re growing animals more consistently every day, not having a feast or famine scenario. With pasture, we’re getting more efficient with the amount of pasture needed to produce a kilo of carcass weight. Because we’ve had a great season where we’re growing more grass, we are tracking to reduce from a ratio of 24kg of dry matter per kilogram of carcass weight, down to only 21kg/dm per kilo; that’s a 12.5% efficiency gain in feed conversion: producing the same amount of beef with less pasture due to its quality.
“We’re now tracking rumination by the minute, constantly looking at every mob, and doing a quick health dashboard check every morning to check they’re on a good nutritional plane.”
Greenhill Farming in Kaingaroa, Northland has collared over 600 Friesian bulls. Co-owner Katie Waters sees Beef Pro as a way to double down on notable production gains they're already tracking towards, since getting Halter.
"Cattle are now shifted daily, rather than every second or third day. We’re running more mobs of smaller sizes, which is reducing social pressure in the herd and improving pasture utilisation,” says Waters.
"Halter will take our production gains even further. We're on target to hit 360kg carcass weight per hectare this season, up from our three-year average of 280kg. In the coming seasons we are hoping to continue these improvements and reach production in the mid-to-high 400s.
"For our bull operation, Halter’s land management tool has enabled us to run our property as 25 individual farmlets. Each farmlet has its own pasture metrics and targets in the Halter app. This has given full flexibility to adjust each block's round length, rather than a blanket approach across the whole farm, which historically has led to compromises and wastage."
Already 185 Kiwi beef farms have signed up for Beef Pro, nearly half of them existing customers upgrading to the new suite of functionality. Halter has sold over a million collars globally, with nearly 400,000 of them satellite-enabled. Halter is the world’s only virtual fencing provider to offer a satellite service, obviating the towers needed for collars to talk to the software.
Beef Pro is now available to new and existing Halter customers. More information at halterhq.com
About Halter
Halter serves more than 3500 farmers and ranchers across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and has sold one million of its solar-powered GPS-enabled collars. The company is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, with a U.S. office in Colorado, and Australian operations in Melbourne. To learn more, visit www.halterhq.com.
Media contact
Ashleigh Gilchrist
ashleigh.gilchrist@halter.co.nz
021 236 8324
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