Virtual fence could modernize the Old West

— -- Dean Anderson insists he doesn't want to put cowboys out of business. But he would like to see them get more indoor work.

Anderson, an animal science researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely by singing commands and whispering into Bessie's ears via radio and tracking her movements by satellite and computer.

"I could be sitting in my office here and programming cows in Mongolia. It's not technologically impossible," says Anderson.

The technology isn't exactly ready yet, but Anderson and others involved in researching the concept of "virtual fencing" of cattle and other livestock say it is getting close.

"It's not a silver bullet," he insists. "You're not going to spend a year in Mazatlan and run your cows by computer. You need to have a human on the ground."

No kidding, says Gary Morton, who runs 2,000 head of yearling cattle at Valles Caldera in the Jemez Mountains range of northern New Mexico.

"They've been saying cowboys and the way we do business is dying for the last 100 years," Morton says. "But we're still around."

Competing systems

For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. But cattle must also be moved around to distribute grazing across the range and prevent them from depleting water sources.

That is what cowboys have been doing since the 19th century. For generations, cowboys have used commands such as "gee" and "haw" to tell their cattle to move right or left.

Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, N.M., says he has built radios that attach to an animal's head and allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to.

"My song includes words like 'come-on girls, let's move.' I also use a clicking sound with my tongue between saying those words. Basically it is my song, and every person who moves cattle or any animals has one."