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Where’s Your Herd? GPS Eartags Are Changing the Game

Where’s Your Herd? GPS Eartags Are Changing the Game

Learn how GPS-enabled eartags are bringing precision and peace of mind to modern cattle operations.

June 10, 2025

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We run our cows most of the year by a crik. Meaning, no cellular technology can reach them unless we want to invest in many towers. We live by a creek. Creeks have cell technology, malls, golf courses things like that. There are quite a few promising technologies for cattle production but many have the limitations of cellular networks. We will be covering many of them in subsequent issues. GPS technology has led to some revolutionary tools for livestock management. The focus on this issue is GPS tags. The cost has come way down and usage is spiking.

In today’s issue:

GPS Ear Tag Buying Guide for Cattlemen
BeefTalk with the Director of Agricultural Operations for Kompass Kapital Management
And much more…

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BEST LINKS

Our Favorite Finds

Calving goes high tech (Dakota News Now)
South Dakota ranchers are using calving cameras, solar tech, and artificial insemination tools to save time, reduce calf loss, and improve herd quality. As costs rise and herds shrink, these tools help ranchers like the Erdmanns boost efficiency and stay competitive.
How Luing cattle and satellite technology are helping transform Glen Finglas (STV News)
Luing cattle and GPS collar technology are helping restore Scotland’s Glen Finglas nature reserve by enabling precise, flexible grazing through virtual fencing. This approach promotes biodiversity and habitat recovery while showcasing how ranchers can use satellite tools to support both conservation and land management.
BarnTools Introduces BinTalk Pro (Successful Farming)
BarnTools’ new BinTalk Pro feed monitoring system delivers 15-minute updates, helping pork and poultry producers prevent feed shortages and optimize performance. With precise sensors, smart alerts, and integration across operations, it provides real-time insights into feed, environment, and animal health — all from one platform.BarnTools Introduces BinTalk Pro
Wearable technology: Enhancing farm labor health, wellness and safety (Ag Proud)
Wearable technology is helping farmers boost worker safety by monitoring heat, noise, fatigue, and air quality in real time. From heart rate bands to air sensors, these rugged, data-driven tools help prevent injury, improve wellness, and increase efficiency—offering a practical way to protect agricultural laborers in tough conditions.
UK to move to mandatory electronic cattle ID (Beef Central)
England will require electronic ID tags for all newborn calves by 2027, replacing the old paper system. The change will improve disease tracking, simplify reporting, and support trade. Farmers support the move but want flexibility to use more advanced UHF technology.

IN SIMPLE TERMS

What is GPS?

GPS technology uses signals from satellites to pinpoint a device’s location on Earth—like a cow’s ear tag—by calculating the time it takes for those signals to arrive. Thanks to advances like smaller, low-power chips and affordable IoT networks, ranchers can now track their herds in real time at a fraction of the cost it took just 20 years ago. This makes high-tech, precision livestock management more accessible than ever before.

DEEP DIVE

GPS Ear Tag Buying Guide for Cattlemen

701x (xTpro): The Full-Featured Ranch Management System

701x's xTpro ear tag ($83 per tag plus $42 annual data plan) is essentially a smartwatch for cattle, offering comprehensive herd management beyond basic GPS tracking. With a five-to seven-year life expectancy and solar charging, the xTpro delivers real-time health alerts, estrus detection for cows, and mounting activity monitoring for bulls. Based in Fargo, North Dakota, this company stands out by providing not just location data but behavioral insights – alerting you days before visual symptoms appear when cattle are sick, tracking bull productivity through mounting data, and even detecting calving events. The satellite-enabled version launching in 2025 will work globally, making it ideal for remote operations. If you want the most comprehensive cattle management system that combines GPS with health monitoring and breeding insights, 701x offers the most advanced solution on the market. Visit: https://www.701x.com/

LoneStar Tracking (GSatSolar): The Simple, Global Solution

LoneStar's GSatSolar tag is the world's smallest livestock GPS tracker at just 2.2 inches and 26 grams, using 100% satellite operation for truly global coverage. Including three years of service with location updates every 6 hours, this tag requires no cellular towers or infrastructure – just attach and track. At 24 grams and solar-powered, it offers 15 days of battery life without sunlight and over 10 years of operation with no battery changes needed. This is your straightforward solution if you primarily need reliable location tracking without the bells and whistles. LoneStar also offers cellular-based options for areas with good coverage, providing updates as frequently as every 5 minutes. For ranchers who want simple, dependable GPS tracking that works anywhere on the planet without complex setup, LoneStar delivers proven satellite technology. Visit: https://www.lonestartracking.com/

Ceres Tag: The Premium Direct-to-Satellite Pioneer

Ceres Tag offers direct-to-satellite connectivity with their newest CERES RANCHER model, providing up to 4 times daily updates and requiring no towers or infrastructure. The system includes comprehensive behavioral monitoring with Pasture Feed Intake data, tracking walking, grazing, resting, and ruminating activities for optimizing performance and productivity. Designed as a reusable tag for the toughest conditions, Ceres Tag focuses on providing detailed behavioral insights and welfare monitoring beyond simple location tracking. However, pricing discussions among cattlemen suggest this is the premium option in the market. The strategic tagging approach means you don't need to tag every animal – by applying devices strategically, you can benchmark the entire herd for location, behavior, and welfare insights. If budget allows and you want cutting-edge animal intelligence with detailed behavioral analytics, Ceres Tag represents the premium tier of livestock monitoring technology. Visit: https://cerestag.com/

OUR TAKE:

Low cost GPS tags are a revolutionary step in livestock management. Giving producers the ability to track and trace their animals, detect health issues and coordinate breeding provides the opportunity for substantial marginal increases in productivity and lowering the costs associated with physical loss and health issues.

BEEFTALK

A Chat with Dan McCarty

Dan McCarty is the Director of Agricultural Operations for Kompass Kapital Management. He has over 20 years of experience in the cattle and beef industry, including several leadership positions in various organizations. In his role, Dan focuses on leadership, strategy, integration, and analysis of Kompass Kapital’s agricultural portfolio. A graduate of Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science in Farm & Ranch Management, Dan is also an auctioneer and a graduate of the Western College of Auctioneering. He resides in western Colorado with his wife and they enjoy spending time with friends and being outdoors.

What’s been the biggest operational change on your ranch since implementing GPS ear tags?

“We originally planned to use them just to track bull data this year – where are they, monitor their health, and see which ones were actually getting the breeding done. However, we put a set of tags in a group of yearling heifers that we were artificially inseminating and discovered that the tags were detecting heats in the heifers at six hours prior to a standing heat. This allowed us to save labor for heat detecting during our breeding season.”

What’s the return on investment you’ve seen—or expect to see—from using GPS tags, and how do you justify the upfront cost?

“We run in big, rugged country, both during the summer and winter. We typically lose a bull on our summer grazing permit each year and are out a couple cows during spring gather. With the price of cattle these days, if we can locate all the bulls we turn out we figure that will pay for the entire cost of tagging this first year. We also have all the bulls that are turned out on our forest permit tagged this year, and figure that we will be able to locate groups of cattle with those bulls easier this year, both for monitoring them during the grazing season and hopefully this will turn into less time spent gathering the forest permit in the fall. The tags also monitor movement, heart rate, and body temperature so if we have a bull go down or get injured, we will know where he is and that he is not getting any cows bred and won’t have to wait until fall when we gather him to find out he wasn’t getting anything done all summer. We currently have about 100 tags in cattle, which was a decent size investment, but think the labor savings alone of locating cattle in big, rugged country will more than pay for the initial investment.”

Have you had any challenges with GPS accuracy, signal coverage, or tag durability in your terrain or climate?

“The tags we went with work on both cell towers and satellite. They check in more times throughout the day when they are on cell towers but have been giving us reliable data 2 to 4 times per day when they are only on satellite. They do have small solar panels on the tags that keep the battery charged and so far, only one of those panels has broken. We were worried about tag retention, but we have only had one bull lose his tag, but we were immediately able to recover it because the location was so accurate. I’m sure we will learn a lot more throughout this year as we plan to keep the tags in all the first calf heifers all the way through the calving season.”

How are you using the data collected—beyond just location—and have you integrated it into your grazing, breeding, or health protocols?

“Our original plan was just to use the tags for GPS location to know where our bulls were on the summer grazing permit. We soon realized these tags provide us with so many data points that we will be able to utilize it to determine grazing patterns, monitor animal health, and because they also collect mounting data on bulls, we will be able to determine which bulls are doing the majority of the work which will help us with future genetic decisions. In the yearling heifers, because of the estrus detection feature, we will have a pretty good idea how successful our artificial insemination project was about 3 weeks after breeding (depending on how many come back into estrus) – which will be months before we actually preg check.”

If you were advising another rancher who’s considering GPS tags, what would you say they must do—or avoid—when getting started?

“I would recommend starting with a small group and narrowing down the focus of exactly what data points will make the biggest positive financial impact on your operation.”

WRAPPING UP

Outro

GPS offers so much groundbreaking technology we didn’t feel like it could be covered in one issue. Next time: artificial Intelligence’s take on the Jeff Bezos/Angus Association situation.

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