Training animals

*For your animals’ sake it is essential that the learning process is well-organised and thought-through. When the animal caretaker has prepared well for the training, the animals experience a more efficient learning process, with as few electric pulses as possible. Spend time observing your animals as they undergo the training.

Before you start the learning process

• Learning must take place in a location with satisfactory mobile and GPS coverage. If you have any doubts, you should conduct a test by walking around with a collar in your hand.
  

• The animals must have a sense of security in the area where the learning takes place. Let them spend time getting acquainted with the area before the training starts.

• We recommend creating the training pasture somewhere you can monitor the animals’ progress. By observing the animals during the training period, you learn how they respond to the system.

• All adult animals must wear a collar to safeguard animal welfare. In herds where some animals wear collars and others do not, the animals wearing collars will ignore both audio warnings and electric pulses in order to follow the herd.

• The training pastures should be small enough for the animals to encounter the Nofence boundary during the training, but large enough for the animals to run about.

• Training pastures that are too big will result in few encounters with the audio warning and the training will take longer.

• If the training pasture is too small the animals can become restless, as they will meet a new boundary in the attempt to get away from another. Give them enough room to run about.

The animals should be well-acquainted with the system before left unattended in their Nofence pasture. Leaving the animals without supervision before they have learned the relationship between the audio warning and the electric pulse will lead to escapes.

The training pasture
The training pasture is fully fenced in with a physical fence. The physical fence is shown as black fence posts, while the Nofence boundary is illustrated by a white line between white corner posts.

The Nofence boundary cuts off a part of the existing pasture area. We recommend cutting off a part of the pasture that the animals will seek out for grazing as they have to cross the boundary to learn how the system works. There should be plenty of space outside the Nofence boundary (at least164 ft / 50 meters) so that they have the ability to escape through all three warning fields and calm down before encountering the physical fence on the opposite side.

When you start training your animals, the first electric pulse will often result in an escape, and you should equip yourself with some grain to lure animals back into the Nofence pasture. It is important that you are present during the learning process until you observe that the animals respect the audio warning and turn around when the scale starts playing.

The most important aspect of the learning process is that the animals learn they can turn the audio warning off by turning and going back into the Nofence pasture. Therefore, it is important that the boundaries are set in a manner that makes them logical to the animals. Create a simple pasture with simple boundaries.

Most animals will understand the relationship between the audio warning and delivery of the electric pulse during the first three days of the training. When you see that the animals in the herd are well-acquainted with the system and turn around when they hear the audio warning, you can consider removing the physical fence from the training pasture. As a general rule, the animals should spend 1-2 weeks on the training pasture before they are given a fully virtual pasture.

It’s important not to make frequent changes to the Nofence pasture in the beginning of the training process. A stable and logical boundary makes for a more efficient learning process.

We recommend creating the training pasture in the vicinity of your home, so that you can monitor the animals’ progress. By observing the animals during the training period, you learn how they respond to the system. Should you observe conditions that you need time to correct, gather the animals and disable the collars via the mobile app.

When the animals have learned to master the connection between their behaviour and the audio warning, they can be moved to new pastures without using physical fences.

Example of good pasture design

Example of poor pasture design

*The collar has two modes: operating mode and teach mode. The audio warning is more easily switched off in teach mode than in operating mode – which makes learning how to switch off the audio warning easier for the animal. You as a farmer, on the other hand, will probably feel that the pasture border is inaccurate when in teach mode.

!Are you new to keeping livestock? Make sure to allow your animals enough time to get to know their new grounds before embarking on the training. The animals should know and feel safe in the area where the training takes place. Experience shows that they establish a sense of security in a completely new location after approximately one week. However, this period will depend on several factors, such as the make-up of the herd and the individuals in it.