Efficacy of virtual fencing to manage two groups of cattle with adjacent virtual boundaries

Virtual fencing (VF) allows cattle producers to manage grazing without additional physical fencing. Although VF is effective for managing one cattle group within a virtual paddock, its efficacy for managing multiple groups within the same pasture, separated only by VF boundaries, remains unclear. This capability could support flexible forage allocation among cattle groups with different nutritional requirements. The objective was to evaluate whether VF could maintain separation between adjacent cattle groups without physical cross-fencing. In this 8-week crossover study, 39 VF-trained yearling steers were assigned to three 13-steer herds. Two experimental herds alternated between a co-fenced treatment (CO), in which another cattle group grazed in an adjacent virtual paddock, and an isolated treatment (ISO), in which no neighboring cattle occupied an adjacent paddock. A third VF-managed group established the adjacent-cattle exposure for CO and was not an experimental herd. A 20-m buffer was implemented between adjacent virtual paddocks. Daily audio cues and electrical pulses per steer were recorded, and GPS locations were used to calculate containment. Containment was analyzed using a beta mixed-effects model with treatment, week, and pasture as fixed effects and herd as a random effect. Cue outcomes were analyzed using repeated-measures mixed models with treatment, day within week, and their interaction as fixed effects, week as a random effect, and an AR(1) covariance structure to account for repeated observations within herd. Fence treatment did not affect the number of audio (P = 0.92) or electric (P = 0.34) cues, nor the audio ratio (P = 0.51) received by each steer. The VF was effective at keeping steers contained, with a containment of 99.96 ± 0.1% and 99.68 ± 0.5% for CO and ISO (P = 0.10), respectively. Thus, VF effectively separated trained cattle groups under the tested 20-m-buffer configuration and could support flexible management of separate cattle groups within the same pasture without physical cross-fencing.