Halter’s new Starlink-based service.<\/p>\n
In the US, the Starlink option will expand Halter\u2019s addressable market by around 50%, Piggott says. <\/p>\n
Starlink will also help with Halter\u2019s pending South American push, Halter says. The reach of Musk\u2019s satellite service \u2013 essentially, anywhere with line-of-sight to the sky \u2013 has also put Africa on Halter\u2019s radar for the first time.<\/p>\n
Today, the Auckland-based, Delaware-incorporated Halter \u2013 which recently raised $377 million at a $3.3b valuation \u2013 says its collars are on more than one million animals across more than 2000 farms.<\/p>\n
What it costs<\/p>\n
The Starlink-enabled collars will cost $9 per animal per month, compared to $8 per cow per month for the mast-based system.<\/p>\n
Piggot says the Starlink option will work out cheaper for beef cattle because there\u2019s no need for a farmer to spend upfront on infrastructure \u2013 essentially, radio masts or towers.<\/p>\n
He quotes the case of a giant ranch in the US where some 50 masts would have been needed, at a cost north of US$100,000. The new Starlink option makes such an installation viable.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlobally, the average is around three or four [masts],\u201d Piggott says.<\/p>\n
He sees the Starlink option appealing to beef farmers, while masts remain more economically appealing for dairy, which typically involves a smaller farm on flatter terrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not every day you\u2019re helping cows connect to satellites in space,” – One NZ CEO Jason Paris. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
In a case study rolled out by Halter, Bevan McKnight, lessee of Northburn Station in the Dunstan Mountains, Central Otago, runs 200 Angus cattle and 11,000 merino sheep on 13,000ha, and says direct-to-satellite will unlock unconstrained grazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time, we\u2019ll be able to graze large blocks of land that have never been touched by our cattle, because we had no way of managing them there.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo do that before this satellite solution would have required 25 towers, so this new practical option makes Halter a no-brainer for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
For data efficiency, only a designated \u201clead cow\u201d needs to communicate with Starlink at any given time. Its smart collar can then share data with other animals in the herd via a mesh network. Every cow is Starlink-connected, to allow for the \u201clead cow\u201d to rotate as animals move around, and the possibility that two or three will shuffle off to the side.<\/p>\n
One NZ tie-up<\/p>\n
The New Zealand leg of Halter\u2019s Starlink offering is based on a partnership with One NZ. <\/p>\n
Piggott said there was no option to work with Starlink directly. One NZ, Spark and 2degrees are the firm\u2019s official resellers of its business service locally. <\/p>\n
\u201cHalter is an example of Kiwi innovation at its absolute best, and we\u2019re stoked to be backing their expansion of rural connectivity with One NZ Satellite for their smart collars,\u201d One NZ chief executive Jason Paris says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not every day you\u2019re helping cows connect to satellites in space, so that New Zealand farmers can access world-leading technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happens if the internet or power goes down?<\/p>\n
What happens if Musk\u2019s satellite service suffers an outage? Or, for mast-based farms, the internet, cellular service and\/or power goes out?<\/p>\n
\u201cStarlink\u2019s very reliable,\u201d Piggott says. <\/p>\n
His key point is that Halter\u2019s GPS-enabled, solar-powered smart collars keep operating even if all connectivity and power is lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe collars retain the commands that they have,\u201d Piggott says. <\/p>\n
So the animals will keep following the existing virtual fence lines.<\/p>\n
If new commands have to be issued \u2013 for example, because animals need to be moved out of a flooded area \u2013 a phone can be used to connect directly to collars via Bluetooth, even if the solution could be inelegant. The wireless technology only has a range of about 15m, but a \u201cmesh\u201d set-up means one collar can share data with others within close proximity.<\/p>\n
New heat-monitoring features<\/p>\n
Halter has also launched a suite of new tools today, including fertility detection for beef cattle as part of a Beef Pro subscription (which costs an extra $2 per month). The feature was previously only available for dairy cows.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s described as a world-first for a smart collar for beef cattle.<\/p>\n
Piggott says it will improve fertility rates via early detection of which cows are non-cycling before breeding season begins. It also rates bull performance.<\/p>\n
Beef farmers also get real-time performance data, allowing them to track a cow and its mob\u2019s average rumination, grazing, standing, lying and walking minutes over the past 24 hours, to identify low and high performing stock sooner.<\/p>\n
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Halter’s new Starlink-based service. In the US, the Starlink option will expand Halter\u2019s addressable market by around 50%,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5589,6326,138,115,11405,67194,802,6650,6440,337,4688,311,182363,208097,702,302,208099,1044,225,208100,117,111,139,69,1118,2680,4753,208101,12860,18746,1503,208098,6211,223,810,7245,3007,6923,102],"class_list":["post-403440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-beef","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-calls","tag-cattle","tag-collars","tag-costs","tag-craig","tag-ever","tag-features","tag-fertility","tag-founder","tag-halter","tag-halters","tag-it","tag-its","tag-landlubbing","tag-management","tag-market","tag-mast","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-opens","tag-partnership","tag-piggott","tag-revealed","tag-size","tag-spacex","tag-starlinkconnected","tag-system","tag-the","tag-up","tag-updates","tag-vs","tag-what","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403440","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=403440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}