Predators in Livestock Production

Predators consistently pose threats to the livelihoods of producers across Texas, having massive financial implications that both directly impact the producers and drive up costs for wool, meat and related products.

The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension founded a program in 2019 to take a science-based approach to training and management of livestock guardian dogs, which were known to increase livestock survival rates. Since the launch of the program and evolution of guarddog methods, the AgriLife Extension has observed lambing and kidding increases up to 100% in less than a year when producers begin to use guardian dogs.

With these proven benefits, the guardian dog program began to tackle operations challenges to ultimately help producers more effectively use guardian dogs through research, training, and development of best management practices. This includes bonding (the way in which puppies attach to the animals they protect), health, and working effectiveness. The center’s strategy around raising and training sets both producers and animals up for success.

Livestock Guardian Dog Challenges

Bill Costanzo, Guardian Livestock Dog Program Specialist, leads a research center specializing in sheep and goat production. Bill outlined a few problems producers face when working with livestock guardian dogs. For example, every time a dog wanders, it risks being poisoned, shot, caught in a trap, or hit by a car. This poses significant risks, including loss of the dog, valued at $3,500 plus increased vulnerability of livestock to predators.

Furthermore, constant health checks can be difficult or impossible on large ranches often spanning tens of thousands of acres. If injuries or health issues go undetected, it can be detrimental to dogs and herd animals.

Texas ranches are vast, ranging from 500 to 60,000 acres, sometimes with over 40 guardian dogs. In many cases, ranchers have to go to the extreme to deploy helicopters to locate animals on their properties.

The AgriLife Extension began searching for tracking solutions to help collect data, address these inefficiencies, and improve the lives of guardian dogs.

Tracking Solutions for Research, Behavior Analysis, and Ranch Ops

With experience implementing off-grid IoT solutions in the oil and gas industry, LoneStar was an ideal fit for evaluating and developing a solution to track guardian dogs across the remote ranches of Texas.

The two organizations developed a custom solution including:

• Tracking Devices: Guardian dog collars fitted with a LoRaWAN GPS tracking device.

• Gateway Mounting: a LoRaWAN gateway mounted on wind mills or other small towers, often utilizing an off-grid setup with cellular backhaul and solar panels. LoRaWAN’s long range allows ranches to connect sensors in otherwise dead zones.

• Dashboards and Alerting: visualization of trends such as animal preference and roaming, and immediate locating of dogs requiring attention or pick up.

Results

Implementation with Producers

1. Early detection of health issues, injury or abnormal behavior, saving animal lives, $3,500 per dog, plus herd animals when left susceptible to attacks.

2. Elimination of astronomical costs in locating herds with helicopters or with time intensive search.

3. Access to heat maps and trends to analyze for pasture utilization. This is used for planning things like new water troughs or fencing to optimize space.

Research and Analytics

Tracking behavior patterns during the full 6 to 10-month development period now allows the center to correct poor or dangerous behavior like roaming and place the dogs with producers where they will be most satisfied. This improves producer outcomes with dogs and quality of life of the animals.

The Helium Network Advantage

When evaluating alternatives the team found that cellular systems were impossible due to battery constraints, data ping frequency, and limited coverage. One could easily drive an hour without cell service in these areas, making LoRaWAN an easy choice.

In using Helium, key locations can be covered, and devices pre-programmed for any ranch, enabling seamless connection and easy onboarding. Animals can roam from one of Texas A&M’s deployments to another, automatically connecting to ranch coverage. Trackers can work in San Angelo for testing, then can head several hours into the middle of nowhere and it will automatically connect to ranch coverage.

Between cost and battery, these solutions have opened the door to remote networks that don’t have to rely on battery and capital intensive systems.

“One ranch that previously could only afford 5 collars reported that it was able to take the money saved on hardware and infrastructure and apply it to new deployments on hundreds of animals.”

—Thomas Remmert, Founder of LoneStar Tracking

What's next?

LoneStar discovered that this problem was widespread and global, and now implements similar projects worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand. Producers can implement additional solutions including tank monitoring, tracking of other species, monitoring for breeding times and patterns, and more.LoneStar continues to quickly expand its tracking business while diversifying as high-demand problems emerge.