By Mel Luymes
If you drove by Grazing Meadows Wagyu outside of Brussels the last two summers, you might have seen a group of Tim and Donna Prior’s cows grazing a pasture in a strip. That would have been typical, mind you, but if you were driving by slowly enough, you might have noticed there were no fences!
Instead, the herd were sporting orange collars that kept them within a virtual fence.
In 2024, Gallagher launched their eShepherd technology in North America and it has plenty of farmers seeing the opportunities. The system consists of solar-powered GPS-enabled collars that will give cattle a warning beep when they get within 20 feet of the “fence” and then deliver a slight deterrent shock (2000 volts) through the chain at the virtual fence line. For context, a cattle fence in Ontario typically runs 5000V … and there’s a good chance that many Rural Voice readers will know what that feels like. (But for reference / interest, an electric eel can deliver 860V, and lightning is typically 300,000,000V. So, now you know!)
“It takes about a week for cattle to get onto them,” says Tim Prior, co-owner, along with his wife Donna, of Grazing Meadows Wagyu and Brussels Agri Services Ltd. The couple have been Gallagher dealers for a few decades, and Tim was chomping at the bit to get the eShepherd system in North America.
“I started following the technology in 2017 when it was in Australia,” he says, but when Gallagher bought shares and later bought that company in 2019, it still took another five years to get the tech to North America. He says they had to work out the kinks and make sure it complied with animal welfare and safety regulations in each new area.
Brussels Agri-Service is now the only Ontario dealer of the eShepherd and Tim says there are about 30 farmers in Ontario that have bought into the system so far.
So how does it work? Tim starts by stressing that a perimeter fence is still required; however, the eShepherd eliminates the need for temporary fencing to move the herd around within the pasture.
Every day, he gives his dedicated 20-cow herd a fresh 150-by-660 foot pasture to move to, simply by moving the virtual boundary on his laptop. For the cattle, the move happens slowly and calmly. As they eventually cross over into the new day’s boundary, the way back to the previous day’s area is blocked off to them. The cattle are never kept from water, however. In Tim’s case, the 660-foot length of the pasture allows cattle access to water lines at the one end.
The calves do not wear the collars, but Tim hasn’t had any issues with them causing damage to the rest of the pasture. “They don’t go too far from their mothers,” he explains.
In the past, Tim and Donna would have set up a temporary fence and moved cattle every day. This is typical of what we call rotational grazing (or sometimes called “mob grazing”), and it improves the health and stocking capacity of a given pasture.
More cowbell
Intensive grazing may feel counterintuitive, and if you haven’t seen Allan Savory’s explanation in a now-famous TED talk, do have a watch. (It is called “How to fight desertification and reverse climate change” and, spoiler alert, the answer is cattle!)
Savory spoke about the South African context. Environmentalists saw the decline of areas due to desertification and fenced animals out of it so the land could “heal.” But over time, the land got even worse. It was then they started to realize that animals were the healers of the land. Grazing animals are prey animals and, in the wild with potential predators, they bunch together in tight herds that munch, trample, poop and then move on. In their wake, they improve soil fertility, water infiltration and bring life back to the desert. It is a virtuous loop, creating more green vegetation to support more grazing.
But in Ontario’s context, it would be far too risky to have a lion on the loose. Instead, farmers can use fences to keep the cattle relatively close together and move them frequently, rotating them around the larger pasture. It means that cattle aren’t selectively eating, and this helps control weeds and improve pasture. The manure is also more evenly distributed across the sub-section, and this improves biomass for the next time the cattle come back to the same spot, typically a month later.
Cattle for carbon capture
So, there are benefits to pasture health and productivity, but also for soil health and carbon capture. This is why fencing, including the eShepherd was included in the On-Farm Climate Action Funding (OFCAF) delivered by Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) for the past few years.
The OFCAF program funded up to 65 percent of the cost of the infrastructure. In this case, with collars costing about $350 CAD, Ontario farmers were paying only $122.50 per cow, along with a $2.75/month subscription fee. In the winter, the collars can be turned off to save the fee for those months.
The Ontario farmers using the eShepherd system are between 10 and 80 cows, says Tim, and they especially like them for pastures that are further away or have areas that are difficult to fence. The collars are designed for 10 years of wear, and the system uses cellular data, but if there are areas that have low signal, it can be boosted with LoRa base stations. In case of an outage, the collars will maintain the last known boundary.
And it is relatively simple to operate, says Tim. “I’m not all that computer savvy, and I figured it out no problem,” he adds. He can also program the fence to move multiple times a day or set it up for the week (… to go on vacation?). Considering the beep line is 20 feet from the shock boundary, he must make sure the boundaries overlap and go past the perimeter fence as well, to not leave ungrazed strips of pasture. From any device, Tim can click on a cow to see its activity over the last 24 hours, perhaps detecting a sick cow, or seeing how many times each went past the beep line.
Just like people, cows have different personalities, and there are always a few bossies in each herd that like to test the boundaries, Tim explains. But thank goodness for them, because they are also the ones that lead the rest of the herd to a new section each day. There are others that are very slow to change. While he adjusts the virtual fence after six a.m. chores, there are still some that haven’t moved to the new section by noon.
The reluctant salesman
Grazing Meadows Wagyu is also a demonstration farm. Tim and Donna have tried and tested all types of fencing and products on the farm over the years. They have the experience themselves and can help others troubleshoot any issues they have.
“And if I don’t like it, I’m not selling it,” Tim says.
Growing up in Brussels, Tim says he was a town boy, through and through. He admits he did terribly in high school, just barely escaping with a 51 percent average. To make matters worse, his father was a schoolteacher.
By 17 years old, Tim was working for a local farmer and then in a factory. When his friend invited him to an information night at Ridgetown College, Tim agreed, and he thought he might try going back to school. This time, he did much better. He went on to do a six-month exchange program to Australia and then he and Donna settled down in Huron County, renting a farmhouse outside of Brussels.
Tim loved cattle, but he hated selling. He worked at the stock yards and took a job with Gallagher, setting up dealerships. When he left the job, soon after, he suggested to them that they set up a demonstration farm to put their products to the test and do the research to show farmers how to improve their grazing and production.
“Who would have guessed that years later, that’s exactly what we’re doing here,” laughs Tim. In 1997, he and Donna got the opportunity to buy the farm they had been renting on, and right away they turned the corn field into a pasture. They invested in the old bank barn, and it is still a working barn to this day.
He started hosting pasture meetings and at first there were six people out, he says. These days, he’ll get about 400 people to his annual meeting at the farm, the first Wednesday each June.
And for someone who hates selling, Brussels Agri Services has become Gallagher’s largest dealership in North America for the last decade. In 2012, they did more sales than any other dealership in the world, and (perhaps surprisingly) they have even more customers south of Brussels than north.
“I don’t sell, I show,” adds Tim. For him, it is all about the relationships he builds along the way. He gives tours of the property to both farmers and non-farmers alike. He says the eShepherd system has really resonated with non-farmers as well, and he likes to see the farm through their eyes. “They are so impressed with the scale of the farm,” he says, “and it reminds me to be grateful for all we have here.”
Despite the few rains he had in 2025, the pasture survived. Tim took the eShepherd collars off the herd in late August and is looking forward to using them again next season. So, if you’re driving the McDonald Line at Newry Road, be sure to slow down and have look next year. ◊