Field Day Take-Away: Virtual Fencing Takes Some of the Labor Out of Rotational Grazing
“It’s been a huge labor saver,” said farmer Michael Dolan to a crowd gathered for a September 17 field day at Seven Seeds Farm outside of Dodgeville, where he spoke about his latest investment: virtual fencing collars for his beef cows.
Dolan stood downhill from a group of cows and their calves. The cattle were inside a perimeter fence, but there was no physical fencing keeping them together within their paddock. Dolan has been rotational grazing full time since 2015, a practice that moves ruminant animals between paddocks to manage pasture growth for both feed quantity and quality. Typically, rotational grazing involves permanent perimeter fencing and movable polywire electric fencing that subdivides the pasture into smaller sections. One of the main chores of rotational grazing is moving that temporary fencing each time the cattle move to fresh pasture, sometimes once or twice a day. Dolan now has one less chore.
Dolan is also a founding member of the Iowa County Uplands Watershed Group, which hosted the event. A farmer-led conservation initiative established in 2016 with support from Michael Fields Agricultural Institute (MFAI), the group began when farmers in the Dodgeville-Spring Green area came together to address shared concerns about soil erosion, agricultural runoff, and water quality in southwestern Wisconsin's hilly Driftless region. MFAI helped the farmers secure their first grant through Wisconsin's Producer-Led Watershed Protection program and provided organizing and administrative support. Today, the group is coordinated by Margaret Krome and the Iowa County Land Conservation Department.
Trading Electric Fencing for GPS Collars
Since February, Dolan has been using solar-powered, GPS-enabled technology to control the rotation of his herd. There are several commercially available virtual fencing systems, but Seven Seeds Farm uses Gallagher eShepherd Virtual Fencing. Each cow wears a collar around her neck with solar panels on either side to keep the battery charged. When a cow approaches the edge of a digitally defined paddock, the collar makes a sound to warn her. If she continues forward, she receives an electric shock, much like she would from touching an electric fence.
Dolan says that the cows have a 90-95% audio-to-shock ratio, meaning that 90-95% of the time, the audio signal alone is enough to keep a cow within the prescribed area. The collars rely on cellular service, which can be difficult to access in the hilly Driftless Area where Dolan grazes his cows. But because the system can access several different cellular networks, Dolan says it has been reliable. Instead of physically moving fences twice a day to give the cows fresh pasture, Dolan now draws paddock boundaries on his computer and schedules moves for three times per day.
The technology doesn’t eliminate management, though. Dolan says he still needs to pay close attention to the pasture to make sure each paddock has regrown adequately since the last time the cows grazed there.
The Economics of Grazing
Each virtual fencing collar costs $225, along with a $2.99-per-head monthly subscription fee. Given the labor savings and profitability of grazing systems, Dolan says he is happy with his investment.
Also attending the Uplands Watershed Group field day was University of Wisconsin grazing expert and farmer Jim Munsch. Munsch has been grazing for decades and says, “if you can’t make money grazing, you shouldn’t do it.” That said, Munsch shared data illustrating how grazing, for both beef and dairy operations, can be more profitable than other forms of managing cattle.
One example came from the University of Minnesota’s FINBIN Farm Financial database. Data from 300 farms showed that feeding dry alfalfa hay costs an average of $104 per ton of dry matter and corn silage costs $87 per ton. By comparison, data from 15 farms in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area showed pasture costing $27 per ton of dry matter. On a per-animal-unit basis, those costs are $2.30 per day for dry alfalfa hay, $1.57 for corn silage and $0.41 for pasture. Munsch also shared Wisconsin dairy data showing that, over a 15-year period, grazed cows generated roughly twice as much per-cow profit than those raised in confinement systems.
Research from Jon Winsten at Winrock International has similarly found substantially higher profitability in low-overhead grazing systems than in traditional confinement dairy systems; A 2024 study found dairy grazing systems profitability approximately four times greater than that of confinement systems. For Munsch, the economics point toward a simple conclusion: “the takeaway message is that the cheapest feed you can get into a ruminant is pasture.”
Helping Farmers Make the Transition
Making the switch to grazing systems still takes a lot of upfront investment and risk on the part of the farmer, not to mention new knowledge for the management intensive system. Federal programs such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) can help farmers make that transition. These Natural Resources Conservation Service(NRCS) programs can help cover fencing, watering systems and other infrastructure associated with grazing. Dolan’s farm was the first in Wisconsin to receive NRCS cost-share assistance for GPS collars. His EQIP contract covered 70% of the purchase price. Demand for conservation funding, however, often exceeds the amount available: Only around 1 in 4 EQIP applications in Wisconsin get funded. In recent years, Wisconsin lawmakers have also considered state funding intended to help fill some of those gaps.
State Representative Jenna Jacobson, who at the time was running for the 17th Senate District, also attended the field day. Asked why she came, Jacobson said that she “wants to learn more so that we can make sure that policy of the state is supportive of the practices and reduces barriers wherever we can find them.” Jacobson was a coauthor of the 2023 and 2025 Transition to Grazing Pilot Program legislation, which would have created a state program to provide technical support and grants of up to $40,000 to farmers implementing livestock forage-based managed grazing systems.
Speaking about the proposal, Jacobson said she wanted to “give folks that incentive to try something new that would potentially not only benefit their farm, but also our waterways.” The proposal advanced through the Assembly Agriculture Committee but it was not included in the final budget passed in 2025. Jacobson said, “I know there's a lot of support when I talk to producers, farmers, people in the Assembly and Senate want to see it pass. So I think we will be able to do something positive with it next year.” .” Jacobson won election to the State Senate on November 3, 2026.
State support for forage-based managed grazing systems would “give folks that incentive to try something new that would potentially not only benefit their farm, but also our waterways.” -State Representative Jenna Jacobson
While federal and state support for grazing remains in limbo, Dolan continues the day-to-day work of raising cattle, producing healthy food for his customers, and sustaining a profitable farm. Virtual fencing has changed one part of how he manages that work, but the larger goal remains the same: carefully managing pasture to nourish his cattle, care for the land, protect water quality, and keep the farm economically viable.
We congratulate all of Wisconsin’s new and returning legislators, and look forward to productive meetings and calls. MFAI has a long tradition of getting both candidates and legislators out to farms where we can discuss the sort of policy we’d like to see implemented to support regenerative farmers.
See more about our policy work here:
Learning her movement pattern helps FNaF players distinguish her activity from Freddy's and respond appropriately to changes near the right entrance.