Halter takes next step

AG-TECH company Halter has launched a new product designed to take Australian beef producers beyond virtual fencing and into active farm performance management.

Halter’s existing beef product lets farmers virtually fence and shift herds from a smartphone, without the labour of physical fencing and the new Beef Pro builds on this by adding a data, planning and decision-support layer.

The product brings together feed demand and grazing planning tools, satellite forage signals, grazing intensity heat maps, behaviour monitoring and automated grazing records, so the same system that moves cattle also helps producers plan, measure and improve.

It provides a singular platform to replace what producer manage in their heads, on whiteboards or spreadsheets, or separate software subscriptions.

“Beef Pro adds the measurement and planning layer on top of the execution layer that is virtual fencing,” said Toby Hurley, director of product at Halter.

“Farmers can quantify what their herds need versus what their land can support, have this data drive planning and build a record of how each grazing performed.

“That feedback loop compounds into better decision-making, building on the pasture utilisation uplift that virtual fencing alone achieves.”

Since launching in Australia in 2022 to a handful of dairy farms, including Tasmania, Halter is today available for beef and dairy operations in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory.  Beef producers have been a substantial part of the Australian expansion, with more than 230 beef farms signing up in 2026 alone.

“The producers we work with aren’t looking for a gadget, they’re looking for tools that work at scale and give them better information to act on,” Mr Hurley said.

“Beef Pro is our answer to that, leaning into what has been proven to work in science and research, enabling better performance on farm without significant additional investment in people, infrastructure or other technology.”

On many Australian beef properties, meaningful production is lost to under-grazing, over-grazing and forage that turns rank.

“Even 1 per cent of utilisation lift equals extra grazing days per head per year, or fewer days needing to be supplementally fed,” Mr Hurley said.

“This way of managing land and animals is what we consider a major leap for beef farmers, because we are talking about optimising the forage that’s already growing, simply by making more data-driven decisions using Halter to avoid under-grazing or over-grazing.”

Michael Gooden, who has been trialling Beef Pro on his farm Old Man Creek, said he could see ‘huge benefits’ in the technology for beef producers, particularly in using data for better decision-making.

“It’s unlocking a whole new layer of observation for our cattle; in dairy farming the feedback loop is really quick, but in beef it can take years to see if the decisions you’re making are the right ones,” he said.

It’s early days, but from what I’ve seen so far, Beef Pro is a way to take those subtle cues of what we are doing and use that data to make better decisions much sooner.”