Goats are used as a environmentally friendly way of clearing difficult terrain of overgrowth, but the downside is the need to either fence off the many acres that need to be cleared or stay with them and watch that they don't wander off.
With the Herdmeister 9000 Plus, each goat has a collar that administers a mild shock if it wanders out of a prescribed area. Just program the area that needs to be cleared by your goat herd and let them loose. The collars won't let them go out of the designated area of a exact shape that you've designated. You can even program narrow paths to go from one area to the next.
Land clearing problems got you in a baahaaaahaad mood? Harsh herbicides getting your goat? Don't let expensive land clearing equipment butt into your profits. It would be- hoof ya to get the Herdmeister 9000 Plus system going.
The Heardmeister 9000 Plus. The "goat" to solution for all your land clearing needs.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 08 2015 Amazon Goats http://www.amazon.c...eywords=goat+grazerGoats for everybody (but not me yet). [MechE, Oct 08 2015] Here's your technology - oh, and category please - you should know better by now... Urban_20Remote_20Herding_20Array [normzone, Oct 12 2015] I had a similar idea once but wondered if goats (well, I was using better animals) would consistently work out that the shocks are associated with an imaginary border. I was concerned that you would just end up with manic-depressive goats, addicted to medicated grass.-- 4and20, Oct 08 2015 With a bit of engineering, you could probably tap right into the cortex such that the goat just felt an overwhelming urge not to go past some point.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2015 They probably use electric fencing, but + for//digitally controlled goats//-- FlyingToaster, Oct 08 2015 There are Amazon goats, and they're available for rental if you need them (in some areas).
I suspect this could be handled the same way that invisible dog fences work. It's not so much that the collar prevents them from doing it, but it is the basis for training them where they can go. In order for it to work in a new area, it would probably require a multi part signal (a "getting near the edge, at the edge, shock) sort of thing.
Of course the invisible fence uses a buried wire that you wouldn't want to bother with, but there's no reason you couldn't use a GPS version, although it might cause problems if you lose communication with one of the satellites.-- MechE, Oct 08 2015 We advocate a pilot study, but using cats instead of goats.-- 8th of 7, Oct 08 2015 I think that's a very bad idea, [8th]. For one thing, cats generally don't have the strength needed to operate a control column. Also, the headsets don't generally fit properly.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2015 I thought they didn't exist?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2015 By the way, obviously these would be wireless collars whose locations were tracked by GPS and radio triangulation. You could instantly reconfigure the areas being grazed with a graphic interface map and the collars would administer a mild shock that got progressively more intense as they approached the boundary.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 08 2015 If you sprayed a dye in a line around the perimeter of the area inside of which you have programmatically restricted the goats, then the goats would have a visual referent for the boundary. Such dyes are quite available; I've personally used a green dye to enhance the color of Christmas trees....-- Vernon, Oct 08 2015 And what did the owners of said trees have to say about it?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2015 I gladly share my property with bobcats and have never had a goat problem.-- cudgel, Oct 08 2015 That's unlikely to work. Goats (at least in Africa) simply don't recognise crocodiles as a threat - they (the crocs) are simply too different from anything that goats have evolved to fear.
You would therefore need to use the robot crocodiles to herd hyenas (which are afraid of crocodiles), which in turn would herd the goats.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2015 [MaxwellBuchanan], the owners were paying me to spray the trees.-- Vernon, Oct 09 2015 What happened to the Herdmeister 2000? Haven't you heard of that?-- pashute, Oct 13 2015 And by the way goats are considered highly intelligent. A mother will show its young what not to eat (if it senses poisonous plants) and there have been goats known to imitate human speech. Seriously, not as a human stunt.-- pashute, Oct 13 2015 The previous model was the Heardmeister 9000 designed to drive livestock from one location to the other complete with steering, stop and go function and full GPS and or radio location ability.
The 2000 model was a whip.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 13 2015 random, halfbakery