Virtual fences to control sheep social and feeding behavior on rangelands
Résumé
Managing the spatial distribution of livestock is a major issue in grazing systems, since the spatial distribution of grazing is correlated both with animal intake and performance and with the dynamics of grasslands and rangelands (Jouven et al., 2010). Close livestock management requires herders for mobile systems or expensive fences for ranching. Virtual fences are flexible and automatic management tools, which have been developed based on recent technologies like GPS and electronic individual collars (Anderson, 2007). The objective of our experiments was to investigate the feasability of using virtual fences as a tool to control grazing distribution of sheep at pasture.