Comparison of visual and audio cues in the efficacy of creating exclusion zones for cattle

Virtual fence relies on an animal’s ability to associate a cue with a pending electric stimulus that is delivered if the animal does not retreat from the boundary. The effectiveness of these cues as a warning signal dictates the strength of the virtual boundary. Current virtual fence systems apply audio cues as warning signals because they are easy to include on a collar, allow for simple movement of boundaries, and do not require physical changes on the ground. However, vision is the dominant sense that most livestock species, including cattle, use to navigate through their environment. Previous research and our own preliminary data suggest that cattle interact differently with visual than audio cues in a virtual fence system. To compare visual vs audio cues and any combination effect from using both cues, 16 steers were tested in a Y-maze with a virtual boundary creating an exclusion zone in one of the arms. We found that animals with visual cues outperformed their audio counterparts, showing a higher proportion of exclusion zone avoidance and demonstrating that avoidance more quickly (p < 0.05). At the small spatial scale of this study, no difference was observed between visual cues alone and the combination with audio cues (p = 1.0). These results suggest that visual cues may be important for virtual fence applications where training opportunities are limited or when high containment requirements are necessary.