Cows get GPS collars to stop them falling in river
77 comments
·May 24, 2025parkersweb
Ah - I live just a half mile from these fields. It’s one of the historical quirks of the city; lots of common land open to the public, grazed by cows.
Although there’s fencing on other boundaries of the grazing land it simply isn’t practical to fence off the river - and as someone who also rows on the river I usually see a cow in the water at least once a year, so it’ll be interesting to see if they work!
scowby
There is Australian research into virtual fencing https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/it/Virtual... that has been commercialised. There’s a lot of expense in fencing and being able to herd cattle remotely is one of the benefits, you can also define areas to avoid, like rivers and dams without putting a fence in place.
pedalpete
When I saw that, I assumed it was www.halterhq.com, which is out of NZ, but I came across them (I think) at Tech23. I'm former CSIRO, and I knew there was virtual fencing tech that came out of CSIRO, I had always assumed it was Halter.
gadders
Our neighbour's cow walked down a slope to drink from a river in the field near us. Unfortunately the slope was a bit muddy and it couldn't get back up again.
After we all tried to give it a bit of a push, we had to admit defeat and call in the Kent Fire Service Animal Rescue Unit: https://www.kent.fire-uk.org/news/meet-crew-specially-traine...
williamdclt
> After we all tried to give it a bit of a push
Not a countryside guy: sounds kinda dangerous? If the cow panics (or gets annoyed/angry), getting kicked by a hoof would seem like a direct trip to the hospital? Or if it slips and falls on someone (is that possible?)
AngryData
A cow can kick you and you can get injured, but it isn't anything close to like a horse kick that can easily instant KO or kill you if they hit somewhere vital and cows aren't nearly as aggressive. Cows are fairly gentle and docile despite their potential size. If someone does die from a cow, which is itself pretty rare, 9/10 times its from someone falling down and getting trampled from the cow being in a panic.
It also partly depends on the size of the cow. Some regular jersey cow might weight 800 pounds but are still pretty broad so if they fall on you you aren't likely to be killed but of course you could be injured. However some holsteins are pushing 2,000+ pounds and could crush your bones if it fell on you. But cows aren't likely to tip over sideways in general, they have much better lateral movement of their legs than horses to stay steady. And if they start to slip or feel unsteady and can't keep themselves upright, they mostly just try to sit or drop down on their belly. It is why cow tipping doesn't work either which is kind of just a hollywood myth. If you did somehow manage to push a cow sideways enough for them to start tipping, which is already going to be incredibly difficult, they will eventually let their legs buckle beneath them and drop down to their stomach, and not fall over at full height with extended legs.
jaredhallen
I've been kicked by cows a fair number of times. I'm sure it could be serious under the right circumstances, but usually it just hurts a lot. Interesting fact, unlike horses cows can kick sideways.
josefritzishere
People do not normally imagine Cows administering ninja kicks but they kinda do.
potato3732842
The cow knows from situation and body language that everyone is trying to help. Panic is not likely.
As with most things, it's not as dangerous as the internet would have you think. Don't sneak up it and hit it and you'll be fine.
crooked-v
Also, horses are way more high-strung than cows.
gadders
It was pretty tentative, and from memory we used a strap across its backside, rather than stand directly behind and push by hand.
I did also have to deadlift a wet sheep out of a stream once and carry one from one field to another. That was a lot easier.
madaxe_again
Oh, I have a Kentish cow story, too, except this cow had been hit by a train and was quite dead.
Just past six AM, winter, somewhere near Godmersham, we’re sat there, the conductor is saying it could be a while before anyone can come to clear the line… so, this being the days of slam-doors, out bundled a dozen besuited commuters, yours truly included, to manhandle a bloody heavy and rather messy deceased bovine out of the way, and off we went. We were only 20 minutes late into Cannon Street, which is essentially on time for that line.
I’m pretty sure it was the only time anyone on that train actually talked to one another.
gadders
Haha. Awesome. I wish that was in the days of mobiles so someone grabbed a picture.
zeristor
Found via:
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2025/05/local-news.html
Sometimes the provenance is just as interesting
aspenmayer
Thanks for that. Metadata can sometimes be more useful than the data itself.
walterbell
Tablogoid!
sharklasers123
Pretty awesome tech, virtual fencing with noise and vibration, assume this is using https://www.halterhq.com. It can even be used to get them to walk to the shed for milking, or virtual break fencing
tordasnes
From the pictures is looks like they're using https://www.nofence.no/en/
krisoft
The only potential problem I can see is that the out-of-hours pinder service is not paid per callout, but paid to be ready to be called out. So if the new corals just reduce the number of callouts but not completely eliminate them you will still need to pay for both the service and the corals too.
emmelaich
Classic kids book: https://bestkidsbooks.com/selection/the-cow-who-fell-in-the-...
amelius
Different solution: just release some turtles on the river bed.
chaps
What is this article. GPS has been used for cow tracking since the 80s at least. Some of the companies have gone on to do ankle monitoring of people.
Turns out GPS isn't that accurate :)
jadamson
It was less accurate in the 80s/90s, if you were a civilian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_...
ViscountPenguin
The local council was using these things to let cows graze Wanstead park for a while, they were really cute.
jll29
Thats for posting about "cow GPS" just as I was looking for further examples for "geofencing" for a book I am writing, apart from FourSquare. ;-)
If I recall correctly, Cambridge City are using off the shelf grazing tech to help with a one off problem.
These digicowbells have a more common application of managing grazing herds in order to rotate them evenly through pastures without having to go out and redeploy fencing every week. If you want Daisy et al to let the north half of the field regrow you just draw a line around it in the app and it’ll get left ungrazed. Popular in large commonland projects too where you want to dynamically leave parts of the land fallow.
It’s also just handy to give your cattle a mobile device. You can monitor their health and breeding status. In the spirit of the dad joke about asking if iPhones “can also make phone calls!?”, it wouldn’t be crazy if these things shipped one day with some kind of two way communications. If Gertrude gets stuck ten miles up the valley it could be handy, perhaps, to see what the problem is before you fire up the brummy quattro (Land Rover.)