GSE Blog 

Save Time and Money.

Make a Plan.

Gathering the herd or finding specific animals has never been easy, but what if you knew where they were before you saddle up or start the truck?

Real World Scenarios

How GSatRancher Tracking Saves Time and Money

Roundup. Gathering. Mustering. Whatever you call it, it’s one of the single largest sources of cost expenditure in a rancher’s annual budget, and the worst part of it is that most of the cost is in wasted resources. Wasted time. Wasted fuel. Wasted Labor Hours. Whether you’re backtracking, driving the range looking for animals, or spending countless hours checking areas with no cattle for miles, you’re still burning fuel, paying workers, and wasting daylight on fruitless efforts. With GSatRanchers tracking your herd, you can spend more time doing real work by making a plan of attack before each roundup.

Below you will find a few examples of the ways in which the GSatRancher makes life easier for ranchers operating on large swaths of grazing land.

Quick Case: Reduction in Fuel Costs

Beta test customers see immediate payback

GSatRancher beta testers were asked to keep records of their fuel consumption before and after tracking their animals. Observations and estimations have placed the average expected fuel savings at nearly 40%, with the strongest results coming from those with larger herds. This cost savings has been attributed to the ability to pre-plan the most efficient roundup route, but also to the ability to pinpoint the location of animals that are further from access points, saving ranchers the need to drive hundreds of miles looking for wayward animals, hoping to get lucky.

With the price of gas reaching levels that would make driving to pick up animals a much more significant cost over the next few years, the introduction of individual animal tracking with GSatRancher couldn’t come at a more welcome time for ranchers. How many gallons of fuel do you use in an average year driving the range to pick up or check on animals? How much would reducing that number by 40% add to your bottom line?

Quick Case: Small Herd. Direct Sales.

Send buyers directly to the animals.

One GSatRancher customer operates a smaller operation, selling organic, free-range, grass-fed beef to local customers. Because they operate a mixed stock ranch with cows, sheep, goats, and horses, they only keep 60 or less head of cattle at a time, and paddocks are reserved for the other animals while the cows graze on public land. This customer regularly sells just one or two animals to each buyer every few months, which makes it incredibly important for them to know where each cow is on a given day.

Since they started tracking their animals with GSatRancher units, they have been leveraging the features of GSatTrack to help them sell the exact animals they want to move first. They keep track of which animal is which using the Attributes feature in GSatTrack, so when a customer calls, they can sell them the stock that is most mature and most ready for sale each time. This has allowed them to maximize their stock rotation without having to ever paddock animals before sale. Their customers love the fact that the animals they purchase have lived their entire lives on the range up to the day they pick them up.

They have also been considering the use of Shared Views to give their customers the ability to go pick up the animal themselves using the most recent location information to find them. This concept has been tested with the ranch’s veterinarian, who has been sent to administer vaccinations directly to specific animals using the shared view feature. So far, they are excited about the prospect of some customers being able to pick up their own animals one day.