GSE Blog 

Save Lives Series

The Save Lives Series shines a spotlight on the ways in which GSE products can be used to identify opportunities to augment worksite safety. The purpose of this series is to help both managers and employees analyze regular business operations through the lens of risk assessment and mitigation, then use real business intelligence to make policy changes or address unsafe behavior patterns with workers. To see more Save Time Series articles, please use the linkbase in the introductory article.

Saving Lives with GSatRancher in the Cattle Ranching Sector

Identifying Unsafe Practices

One major source of health and safety risk in the Cattle Ranching sector is Lost or Injured Livestock. Cattle being separated from the herd on large Federal or State lands or even large open ranches can lead to significant loss or resource expenditure.

Losing livestock from simple injuries, or from being separated from the herd, costs Cattle Ranchers a significant amount of money each year in terms of lost revenue, pulling resources to locate them, and replacing missing livestock as a result. The GSatRancher provides an elegant solution to this problem.

Understanding the Problem

Many Cattle Ranchers are running thousands of head of cattle on hundreds, if not thousands of acres of both private and state or federal land. Keeping track of all livestock becomes a difficult task when considering that some of these ranches and ranchers are operating on vast swaths of open land. Even experienced Cattle Ranchers struggle with keeping the herd together, locating injured cattle in time, and finding stragglers before they are lost forever. Additionally, searching for lost or injured livestock can put the lives of Ranch Hands at risk as well, considering they may have to cover large areas in harsh remote environments attempting to locate any missing livestock. Numbers count when working with livestock, and every lost or injured animal is another hit in the bottom line. Cattle Ranchers are constantly fighting to reduce operational costs while raising healthy animals to bring to market.

Understanding the Solution

Cattle Ranchers are often operating in extremely remote areas typically with harsh environments and little to no telecommunications infrastructure. This means solutions must be reliable in very remote regions, must stand up to hard environments, and must not require consistent maintenance. Even large private ranches run into issues with keeping the herd together and locating any stragglers that simply got lost or were injured and left behind. Cattle Ranchers need an affordable solution which offers the ability to track animals throughout the day and notify them when an animal is straying from the herd or has not moved for an extended period of time.

Achieving the Solution with GSatRancher

The GSatRancher is a small yet durable satellite tracking device which can be mounted on livestock by a typical ear tag or by using a collar. The GSatRancher pings location either four times daily or up to every half hour depending on which airtime package is purchased, for 3 years. When paired with GSatTrack, a complete tracking and asset management platform, Cattle Ranchers can see where their livestock are and how they are interacting with their environment. Portal managers can create Geofences around important areas like a specific pasture, watering hole, shaded areas, and more. Alerts can then be created to notify portal managers of when specific Assets (the livestock) are entering and exiting these areas. Alerts can also be used to notify portal managers when a specific Asset has not moved in a pre-designated amount of time.

In understanding how the solution works collectively, if a herd is tracked with the GSatRancher then the Portal Manager can notify the Ranch Hands in the field when an Asset stops moving for an extended period of time or wanders outside of a designated area. What this means is Cattle Ranchers will have the ability to know when an animal is lost or potentially injured, allowing them to locate that animal quickly. This means no more sending out Ranch Hands in force attempting to locate a lost animal, or finding an injured animal after it is too late to help them. This solution saves the lives of lost and injured cattle but also saves the Cattle Rancher lost revenue or reduced operating costs from sending resources to find these animals.

More About the GSatRancher

The GSatRancher is a cattle-specific tracker in the GSatSolar Series, offering an unprecedented level of traceability to the ranching industry at an affordable cost. Solar powered and rugged, with satellite-based connectivity, the GSatRancher was designed to be deployed for up to three years with no need for intervention or maintenance. The GSatRancher is the herald of a new era of data infrastructure in the ranching industry, allowing ranchers to affordably collect data at the individual level for the first time.