Animal training

Hear what farmer Andreas has to say about animal training😊

(Insert english video HERE)

When it comes to the actual training, we have three phases that we want you and your animals to go through. These three phases will last approximately one week. The goal of the training is for the animals to learn to turn around when they hear the sound signals.

Phase 1: Adaption Phase

🕑 Time needed: This varies from herd to herd and can take anywhere from minutes to several hours.

This is the phase where you allow your animals to get used to wearing the collar and the area where they will be trained. Wait to add the collars to the virtual fence in the app.

The area should be physically fenced.

The training area for the animals shouldn't be too small or too large. A good example for training 10 animals is an area of 50x50 meters. The fence should ensure animal welfare (not too cramped), while also facilitating frequent interactions with the fence (not too large).

You and your herd are ready for the next step when the animals are comfortable wearing the collar and the flock is calm.

Phase 2: Exposure Phase

🕑 Time needed: 2-3 days

Now you can add the collars to a fence you've drawn (training fence) in the app.

During this phase, it's important for the animals to get familiar with how the virtual fence works. We want as many interactions with the virtual fence as possible — the more, the better.

It's important to remember that some animals will be more curious and bold than others. Therefore, make sure to check in the app that all the animals have heard the sound and experienced the shock.

Read more about how virtual fences work here (NEED LINK)

What to do if some animals don't understand the virtual fence?

If you notice that certain animals are struggling to understand the system, we recommend removing them from the herd during training so they don’t hinder the progress of the animals that do understand the system. These animals can be reintroduced to the herd later on, allowing them to learn from the others.

If you, as a farmer, don’t fully understand how the system works or need some guidance to get started, you're welcome to call us or send us an email.

Phase 3: The Control Phase

🕑 Duration: 2-3 days

During this phase, you will gradually remove parts of the physical fence to see if the animals have understood the system. Eventually, you will remove all physical fences so that the animals rely solely on the sound signal.

If you're unable to remove the physical fence, you can move the virtual fence as you see that the animals are understanding the system. This is recommended because we want the animals to experience many interactions with the virtual fence, and it’s important to challenge them as they learn where the boundaries are.

When is the training complete?

A good way to check if the training is going in the right direction is by observing that the number of shocks decreases towards the end of the training period. However, if you move either the physical or virtual fence boundaries during training, you will most likely see an increase in both sound signals and shocks. This is completely normal!

Screenshot from the Monil app: There will likely be many interactions with the fence on the first day, and ideally a significant decrease in shocks on the second day. In this case, we moved the fence boundaries on Thursday, and as seen, there was an increase in events. After this, we typically observe that the number of shocks gradually decreases throughout the week.

The time needed to train the animals varies from herd to herd. Some animals will learn the system very quickly, especially if they have used similar systems before. Other herds, however, may take longer if they have never worn collars or similar devices.

In any case, we recommend a minimum of one week of training. The most important goal of the training is for the animals to generally turn when they hear the sound signal before they receive a shock. This can be tracked in the app, in addition to physical observation.

A virtual fence does not replace monitoring

Remember that virtual fences are not a hard boundary, and you must account for GNSS signal errors and maintain a good distance from areas where you don't want the animals to go. It is still important to keep an eye on the animals and observe how they interact with the fence, as there will always be things outside the boundary that may cause the animals to ignore it.

Once the animals are fully trained, they can be transferred from the training area to the virtual pastures.

Ready to draw your first fence? (LINK TO PAGE)