Blackfoot ranchers tout Conquistador cows, virtual fencing
Laura Lundquist
OVANDO (Missoula Current) - Montana’s drought hasn’t been kind to livestock producers, especially those in the Blackfoot River valley. While they can’t do much about water woes, one ranching couple is showing how some new tools can reduce their losses from other stressors, such as predators or fire.
Over the past two years, as water has dwindled in the Blackfoot River, Paws Up Ranch managers Kyle and Leigh Kelly have watched their angus herd dwindle. They can’t afford to keep as many cows because forage is getting scarce. They sold some cattle last fall and sold another 130 head this spring. Then, they couldn’t do a second cutting of hay and had to ship their calves a month earlier than usual. Two weeks ago, they shipped more cows out, and Lee said it’s probably not over yet.
“We will have destocked our herd by 25%. I don’t think we’ve seen the full effect of the drought yet. Next year is going to be even uglier even if we get a big snowpack,” Leigh said.
The Kellys are doing their best to hang on to the cattle operation. Paws Up Ranch does benefit from the high-end-tourist side of its business, but the two sides tend to operate separately, and no rancher likes to stay in the red. So for the past few years, with the support of the Blackfoot Challenge, the Kellys have been trying some new practices that are showing a lot of promise for saving livestock from predators and saving money.
For the past 20 years, the ranch has run its angus cattle on a nearby 10,000-acre Bureau of Land Management allotment, which has higher-elevation mountainous terrain that is home to a number of predators, including a pack of wolves. For that reason, Kyle said he lost several calves in various years.
But things changed about a decade ago after he started adding spunky Corriente cattle to the herd. Often used in rodeos, Corriente cattle are a smaller horned breed that the Conquistadors brought to America. Molly McDevitt, Blackfoot Challenge science director, said the breed isn’t necessarily aggressive; it just has a stronger mothering instinct.
“As we integrated about six or seven of these with every hundred head of angus cattle, we’ve very significantly impacted our losses. When a predator shows up, they come to it, they bring the fight. They will bellow, they gather the rest of the cows up so they end up in this kind of mob, and the ones with the horns will come out and defend their calves. I’ve never had one of my horned cattle not come home with a calf,” Kyle said. “After 10 to 12 years of integrating those horned cattle in with our black cows, our angus have adopted that same sort of mentality.”
Now, Corriente cattle, along with guard dogs and range riders, help keep the angus herd safe while they graze the allotment. But a few years ago, the allotment added another challenge: the BLM wants to minimize or even eliminate fencing on public land to improve wildlife migration. But it also wants to protect tributary streams of the Blackfoot River. So if the ranch wants to run cattle, it would have to pay $80,000 to $90,000 to fence out all the riparian areas on the allotment, Kyle said.
“We would have to put fence up and down both sides for miles of these drainages. Which was going to create more gates and more wildlife conflict. And it wasn’t going to be feasible for us to continue to graze it with that type of expense,” Kyle said.
Fortunately, as a number of dog owners can tell you, technology has made it so physical fences are no longer necessary. Instead, Kyle can draw a virtual fence around a desired area on the allotment using his computer, which sends the information to a solar-powered tower. Every cow carries a receiver that will first warn and then shock the cow if it approaches the virtual fence line transmitted by the tower.
After two years, Lee has gotten used to the bling hanging around her cows’ necks. But she still smiles when the local kids call them “gangster cows” due to their thick neck chain dangling a pocketbook-sized plastic box. And while they aren’t cheap, they’ve helped keep more money in her pocketbook.
The cow collars cost about $50 each per year. Then add another $10,000 each for the communication towers, plus the price of the computer program. Even so, the Kellys are paying only around 40% of what the BLM fencing would have cost.
In addition to getting a thumbs-up from the BLM, the virtual fencing technology has other advantages, Leigh said. The Kellys don’t have to maintain fences, which is taking more time due to blowdowns and wildfire. The cows’ movements can signal if predators are nearby or when the cows have found a new water source. Cows can be kept out of sensitive places such as riparian or prescribed burn areas. Similarly, if a range rider finds a carcass, Kyle might even be able to draw a fence around it, so predators could feed on it without the cows being in danger, Lee said. That’s one more aspect that can help both cows and wildlife stay alive.
The technology has improved in the two years they’ve been using it. As receivers get smaller, Lee predicts that the cows might eventually exchange their neck chains for earrings. Rugged terrain can mess with the tower’s signal, and Kyle still can’t see the cows’ positions in real-time, but data transfer has sped up quite a bit in the past year. Lee remembers riding out last year to where the cows were supposed to be, based upon Kyle’s computer display, but then finding they were long gone.
“Kyle would be on this godforsaken application telling me where the cows should be. And I’m like ‘There are no cows here.” We got in plenty of fights last year,” Lee said. “It’s gotten a lot faster this year. And it is cool to be on a 10,000-acre piece and be like, ‘We’re going to drop over this ridge and those cows are going to be there.’ That’s helping us be efficient and get home. It could be efficient in the event of a fire.”
McDevitt said the Blackfoot Challenge was lucky to have ranchers like the Kellys who are willing to try new things and allow the organization to learn along with them. Kyle said three or four other ranchers in the Blackfoot valley have heard about their success and are interested in trying virtual fences. One benefit of the virtual fence system is that nearby ranches could share the same tower to transfer signals. Kyle took it one step further and put his tower on a trailer so a permanent structure isn’t needed and he can move it around to use different grazing areas.
“On public lands, this is the direction we’re headed. I feel really confident saying that,” Leigh said. “When there’s a massive forest fire, ranchers are going to have the opportunity to move their cattle to other locations. Across the West, we see ranches sell off and become subdivisions because they’re losing their allotments in fires. If we can create flexibility and nimbleness and combine that predator management, this is a huge leap forward.”
(This story was written with the support of the Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources.)
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.