{"id":108081,"date":"2025-10-30T02:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T02:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/108081\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T02:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T02:32:08","slug":"storms-knocked-out-virtual-farm-fences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/108081\/","title":{"rendered":"Storms knocked out virtual farm fences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe had around about 70 farms impacted in total, mostly in the South Island, and of those we probably lost around about 30 towers, just being smashed by the sheer force of the gusts of wind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe jumped in a couple of trucks in Auckland and drove all the way down to Southland with replacement gear for the farmers that have been impacted over the long weekend, and helped get them set back up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The storm threw areas of Canterbury<\/a>, then Southland and Clutha into a state of emergency, as thousands lost power, slips cut off roads and highways, and many faced widespread damage from falling trees and buildings.<\/p>\n

Espiner confirmed outages did not result in virtual fences dropping out, and said there were multiple \u201cfail safes\u201d for when power and cell networks went down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen those things happen, the farms have the option of either just holding in place, so the cows remain within their virtual breaks \u2013 or if the farmer wants to move them, he or she can simply switch to manual mode and then he or she can move the cows the old-fashioned way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it had been a \u201cpretty wild spring\u201d, so when there had been recent outages, the systems would switch to battery backup mode so farming could continue as normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when the power goes out, the entire Halter system switches to battery mode, and we have battery backup for at least two to three days. So in most cases, that can bring the farm through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Espiner said the data that was essential to farmers was in most cases automatically backed up for a certain amount of time after the system went down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can hold their data for I think anything less than about 20 hours\u2019 worth of outage, it doesn\u2019t actually have a major impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty happy that we actually managed to get almost all of those farms back up within those 20 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Espiner said for those who had lost data, it may only be one heat lost, but its algorithms could help catch them up.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in most cases, farmers won\u2019t have lost any crucial data from our mating systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said 12 farms in affected regions <\/a>were mid-mating on the day of the storm, and 23 were scheduled to start in the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some parts of the country, it is mating season, and Halter obviously helps farmers know when the cows are going to be in the heat as well, so it\u2019s really important for us to get the data back online for them really quickly because they need that data in order to spot when their accounts are going to be in heat and cycling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really prioritised them because that data is just essential for them in order to make informed decisions about mating.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 1000 farms nationwide had Halter\u2019s virtual fencing and pasture management systems in place.<\/p>\n

-RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe had around about 70 farms impacted in total, mostly in the South Island, and of those we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,3233,45079,5503,28205,111,139,69,3111,28206,6563,52193],"class_list":["post-108081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-farm","tag-fences","tag-knocked","tag-monique","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-out","tag-steele","tag-storms","tag-virtual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}