Freeing up labour to graze more intensively

“eShepherd has really freed up a lot of my labor and allowed me to more intensively manage.”

Vannie Collins · Texas, USA

Las Islas Ranch sits across Texas brush country — mesquite, live oak, red-brown soil, and a kind of distance that makes a single fence run feel like a week’s work. Vannie Collins runs an extensive beef operation that used to revolve around staying on top of barbed wire.

What it replaced

For Las Islas, fencing wasn’t expensive because the wire is expensive. It was expensive because every storm meant another day of repairs, every brush fire meant another stretch to rebuild, and every rotation meant another gate that somebody had to drive thirty miles to open.

“eShepherd has really freed up a lot of my labor and allowed me to more intensively manage.”

The neckbands went on the cattle in the yards. The boundaries went onto a phone. The crew that used to drive line stopped driving line.

What it added

• Tighter rotations. Country that used to get one long graze now sees the cattle move through in eight or nine breaks.
• Wildlife corridors stay open. No physical barrier means deer, hogs, and quail still move how they always did.
• Compliance audit, easy. Every animal’s location is recorded; every move is timestamped.

It hasn’t fixed everything — Texas is still Texas, the brush is still the brush — but the labour that used to pour into wire now pours into cattle.