Halter’s Animal Welfare Charter
Introduction
Cows are the heart of a cattle farm. Happy and healthy cows are productive cows. Farmers take care in managing their cows to produce food that feeds society. And so, farmers are the backbone of economies throughout the world. The future of food production hinges on questions like: How do we feed the world’s growing population without compromising our natural resources? At Halter, our mission is to enable farmers to run more productive and sustainable farms while caring for their animals and the environment.
Every day, farmers face mounting challenges such as increasing productivity demands, rising input costs, labour shortages, animal health and welfare priorities, and environmental and compliance pressures. Halter has built a farm management system that is helping farmers to overcome these challenges.
At the core of the system are virtual fencing and animal guidance technologies. In the years ahead, we believe that technologies like Halter will play an increasingly important role in supporting farmers to care for their animals.
Our Animal Welfare Charter explains how the Halter system works, Halter’s commitment to protecting animal welfare, our partnership with leading veterinarians and animal welfare experts, and a summary of studies in the field of virtual fencing and animal welfare. This information was published in September 2023 and will be updated as our system continues to evolve.
For anyone interested in seeing the Halter system in action, please contact us. We conduct Open Days on Halter farms in regions throughout the markets we operate in, and anyone is welcome to attend and see the system in action.
Halter in a nutshell
Halter follows a set of standards and safeguards to ensure animal welfare is protected when training, containing and guiding animals with virtual fencing technology (see Section 3).
Farmers can continuously monitor their cows’ behaviour, reproductive status, and location with Halter. Halter can alert farmers to cows potentially showing signs of poor health and cows on heat via the Halter app on their phone.
Our team works closely with an independent Veterinary Advisory Board composed of six leading veterinarians in dairy husbandry, production and animal welfare who directly advise our product teams across a range of areas.
Halter has one of the largest datasets on cow behaviour in the world, with over 42 million days of data. Halter uses this data to do extensive research on animal behaviour, health and welfare.
Halter also partners with leading animal behaviour experts from the Tasmanian Industry of Agriculture on research studies focused on pastoral dairy cows and virtual fencing technology.
¹ Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture - ‘Managing dairy cows with Halter virtual fencing technology’, Dr Megan Verdon (preliminary study results, September 2023)
The Halter system includes a collar per cow, a Halter app on the farmer’s phone, and a communications network on each farm.
Cows learn over a 7 day training period to respond to two primary cues - sound and vibration. Through learning, these cues become predictable and controllable for cows.
Sound cues give animals directional guidance if they cross a virtual boundary. Vibration cues encourage animals to walk in the correct direction.
The collar also has a secondary cue - a low-energy electric pulse - used to reinforce the primary cues if cows choose to ignore them. The pulse is mainly used during the training period. It’s called a ‘pulse’ because it is significantly weaker in energy than the ‘shock’ from a standard electric fence.
Once trained, the guidance cues that a typical cow receives each day are almost entirely sound and vibration. These cues typically make up only 1.6 minutes per day per cow, so for over 99% of the day the typical cow does not experience any cues.¹
1. System overview
In 2016, Halter was founded on our vision to unlock the connection between humans and animals. Animal welfare is central to our founding, our values and our system. It’s central to the decisions we make which advance our system.
2. Veterinary Advisory Board
Halter’s independent Veterinary Advisory Board includes seven leading large animal veterinarians in New Zealand who directly advise our product teams. This collaboration draws on their deep industry knowledge and expertise to influence the direction of Halter’s product, which benefits the cows managed with Halter.
3. Animal Welfare Charter
Halter has trained more dairy cows with virtual fencing technology than any other wearable in the market. Over seven years we have developed and refined our technology and gained deep expertise in training and guiding animals while protecting their welfare.
4. Animal health benefits
A healthy cow is a happy and productive cow. Halter improves a farmer's ability to manage animal health in ways conventional farming doesn't allow.
5. Research into virtual fencing
Internally, our team does continuous extensive research based on millions of days of cow behaviour in order to advance our system and improve animal welfare outcomes.
6. Virtual fencing background
There is no evidence that receiving pulses distresses any cows, as long as pulses are predictable and controllable.
7. Training Animals
Training is a core capability in Halter’s packages and is mandatory for farmers and their cows. Precise and effective training of animals is essential to protect the welfare of virtually fenced animals.
8. Leadership and governance
Halter’s Animal Welfare & Ethics Leadership Group (AWELG) ensures that Halter’s system promotes responsible virtual fencing and animal guidance that advance animal welfare standards.
9. Legislative compliance
Globally, research and development into virtual fencing technology for pastoral farming systems has been underway for decades.
