Livestock GPS — Buyer Guide

Collar, ear-tag or bolus — and LoRa or 4G? How to match a tracker to your stock and your ground.

The right tracker for your animals depends on what you're trying to solve — deterring rustlers, finding strays on the hill, or keeping an eye on a calving cow — and on the ground you farm. This guide walks you through the choices that matter: collar versus ear-tag versus rumen bolus, long-range LoRa radio versus 4G cellular, how long the battery really lasts and whether solar charging earns its keep, and how to set up geofences that work in practice. We give honest pointers for cattle, sheep and horses, plus fitting advice so a tracker stays put and stays comfortable through a wet British winter.

Key features

• Collar, Ear-Tag or Bolus. The three mounting styles compared — what suits cattle versus sheep, where each one stays put, and the trade-offs in size, battery and welfare.
• LoRa or 4G for Your Ground. Long-range farm radio against the mobile network: which copes with hills, hidden valleys and notspots, and what each costs to run.
• Battery Life and Solar. What battery figures actually mean once you account for fix frequency, cold weather and woodland — and when a solar-topped collar pays off.
• Geofences That Hold Up. Drawing boundaries that match real hedges and dykes, cutting down nuisance alerts, and rotating zones as you shift grazing.
• Theft Versus Welfare. Choosing between fast theft alerts and quiet welfare monitoring — straying, calving and no-movement detection — or a tracker that does both.
• Fitting Without Fuss. Sizing and positioning so a collar or tag doesn't rub, slip or get lost, plus how to handle stock at fitting and check-up time.

What connectivity and running costs should I plan for?

A 4G tracker needs a data SIM, and any UK network — EE, Vodafone, O2 or Three — will do. Trackers sip data, often well under 1GB a month each, so a multi-SIM or pooled plan keeps the per-animal cost low across a herd or flock. You can fit your own SIM or buy them pre-configured, and a multi-network SIM that hops to the strongest signal is worth having on broken hill coverage.

LoRa trackers skip the mobile network entirely. They talk to a gateway you put up yourself over long-range radio, so there's no SIM bill — you trade a monthly cost for the up-front job of siting gateways to cover your ground. Where 4G coverage is thin, look for trackers with network failover or pick LoRa, and remember that solar-assisted collars cut the labour of recharging across a big, spread-out enterprise.

Frequently asked questions

Will a tracker find sheep out on open moorland?

A 4G tag reports from anywhere with mobile signal, which covers most hill ground at least patchily. Where there's no coverage at all, a LoRa tracker talking to your own farm gateway is the more dependable choice — provided the animal stays within radio reach of a gateway, which is shorter across folded, hilly terrain than the open-ground headline figures suggest.

Can trackers cope with rain, mud and a thorough scratching?

Livestock trackers are sealed to a high ingress rating and built for permanent outdoor wear, so weather is rarely the issue. The bigger test is mechanical: animals rub on gateposts, wallow and barge through gorse, so look for a rugged housing and a strap or tag fixing rated for that abuse.

How often do I need to handle the animal to check it?

Most farmers fold tracker checks into routine gatherings — dosing, scanning, foot work — rather than handling stock specially. Glance at strap tension and any rubbing then, and watch battery levels on the app between times so you're never caught out in the field.

Is collar, ear-tag or bolus best for my stock?

Collars hold the largest batteries and antennas and suit cattle and horses well, but can snag and need correct tensioning. Ear-tags are light and hard to lose, which works for sheep, though space limits battery and signal. A rumen bolus sits safely inside the animal and can't be removed by a thief, but it's a one-way fitting and better suited to welfare than location tracking.

What do I do when a battery is getting low?

A good system flags low batteries days ahead in the app, so you can fold a swap or recharge into the next handling. Rechargeable collars top up on a dock; sealed tags and boluses are replaced as a unit. Solar-assisted collars stretch the interval but still want an occasional check after a run of dark winter weeks.

Can I keep tabs on stock across several fields or grazing blocks?

Yes — geofencing lets you draw as many zones as you need and get an alert when an animal crosses into or out of one. That suits rotational and mob grazing, and it flags a beast that's pushed through a weak fence before it reaches the road.

How accurate will the location actually be?

In open fields you can expect a fix within roughly 5–10 metres — close enough to walk straight to an animal. Steep valleys and dense woodland scatter the signal and widen that margin, but it stays good enough to point you to the right corner of the right field.