Fenceless Grazing

For me, being able to manage animals without fencing is the Holy Grail of farming and ranching.  Imagine it:  No more pounding posts in the hot sun, no more unwinding and rewinding spools of wire, no more accidentally grabbing onto the fence and getting shocked,and all while animals stay just where you want them.  I am so grateful for the folks who are actually getting close to making this dream a reality! Failed Attempts Plant Seeds of Hope Almost 20 years ago when I was just starting my research on using goats to graze firebreaks, I wanted to find a solution for keeping the animals confined that didn't involve herders (who were said to be unreliable) and fences (which took time and money).  My research partner had read about experiments using flagging tape to outline boundaries and training animals to respect these boundaries with shock collars.  We decided to try this out, so we built a small enclosure with rope and flagging tape, and put one goat outfitted with my colleagues dog's shock collar.  Our plan was that every time he walked toward the fence, we would press the button to shock him, and he would learn "I better not go there." There were two problems.  First our reflexes weren't quick enough to press the button just when he got to the fence. So often he got shocked as he was walking away from the fence line.  In addition, his neck hair prevented him from feeling a mild shock, and we turned up the heat.  The result was a goat who walked towards the fence