Livestock farming is entering a new phase of precision agriculture. Technology once used primarily to track and contain cattle is creating new opportunities to help farmers make decisions about animal health, grazing and land management, while reducing demands on their time and labour.

Managing a herd has always depended heavily on the farmer’s eye and instinct. This expertise remains fundamental. The challenge is that modern farms are often larger and more dispersed, and farmers today are often juggling separate careers while managing their farm too. This is where technology can help.

In the UK, the N3 collar was piloted by James Waight, who farms 450 Angus cattle across 8,000 acres of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. “Before, I'd check one thing for where the herd was, another for which cows needed attention, and drive out to see if the pasture was ready. With N3, it's all in the same app. It sounds like a small thing, but it changes how I plan the whole day,” said Waight.

Enabled by its recently launched N3 cattle collar, Nofence, the Norwegian agtech company that pioneered virtual fencing for livestock, is expanding into Precision Livestock Management. The company is bringing virtual fencing together with deeper livestock monitoring and land-management data in one platform, helping farmers understand not only where their cattle are, but which animals may require attention, how grazing is progressing and how that activity can be turned into useful farm records.

James Waight added; “For livestock farmers, gaining greater insight into the reproductive cycle and the overall health of the cattle has led to better overall health outcomes for my herd and general breeding. In addition, being able to track the movement of my herd has made farming across 8,000 hectares has been a game changer, as if something seems off or if there is reduced movement while I’m away from the farm - you can investigate and identify any issues very early.” 

For Gloucestershire farmer Alex Crawley, the ability to use the technology to build a clearer picture of what is happening across the herd provides reassurance that extends beyond knowing where his animals are. “These collars are monitoring my animals' movements, activity rates, and grazing patterns around the clock, alerting me if something might be wrong. It gives me great peace of mind.” said Crawley.

Managing animal health to improve farm productivity

One of the most significant shifts with the technology is the ability to use behavioural data to support reproductive and animal-health decisions. The data collected by N3 collars on rumination and activity enable farmers to identify changes associated with reproductive cycles, including animals approaching or in heat and behavioural changes ahead of calving.

For livestock farmers, reproduction is where profit is made or lost. A missed heat cycle means a longer calving window. An unattended birth can mean losing a calf. Gaining insight before a problem occurs changes everything. Through innovation in farming, having technology monitoring heat cycles and calving alerts helps producers get a complete picture of the herd’s overall health and reproduction. This is a vital tool for livestock farmers.

Managing livestock and land together

Beyond containment, the technology enables deeper insights into how livestock and land are performing together. Virtual fencing already allows farmers to create grazing areas digitally rather than relying solely on permanent or temporary physical fencing. Precision technology builds on that capability, giving farmers a clearer picture of how cattle use those grazing areas over time.

By bringing location, herd movement and grazing information together, the technology enables farmers to plan and manage rotations while building a record of what has happened on the land. For grazing businesses, this creates an opportunity to make livestock movement part of a wider land-management system - helping farmers understand stocking levels, grazing duration and pasture use rather than treating fencing, animal monitoring and land management as separate activities.

Turning everyday grazing into evidence

Information is generated through everyday farm operations. Farmers are increasingly being asked to record and demonstrate how land is being managed, particularly where they participate in environmental, conservation or agricultural support schemes. Producing those records manually can add another administrative task to the working day.

Nofence’s platform automatically turns information collected through normal grazing activity into usable reports, including data on stocking density, grazing days, herd movements and pasture use. This will allow information generated while managing livestock to support grant applications, scheme requirements, sustainability certification and other compliance or stewardship reporting, rather than requiring farmers to reconstruct the same information separately.

The wider opportunity is to make data collection a by-product of farming rather than another job for the farmer.

Bringing precision farming to places without reliable mobile coverage

The farms that potentially have most to gain from remote livestock management can also be among the hardest places to connect.

Many extensive systems operate across uplands, valleys, woodland and other areas where reliable mobile coverage cannot be taken for granted. These are also environments where being able to understand where livestock are and whether an animal may require attention without first travelling to the herd can be particularly valuable.

The N3 has therefore been designed with three independent connectivity layers – cellular, satellite, and HerdNet™, Nofence's collar-to-collar communication network, switching between them according to availability. Satellite connectivity is included within the standard subscription, and farmers do not need to install base stations.

The principle is that connectivity follows the herd rather than requiring the herd to remain within reach of existing infrastructure - creating the foundation for future precision-management tools to work across remote and extensive farming systems as well as more connected farms.