Satellite navigation isn’t just for luxury cars anymore — it’s for cows, too.

James Russell, professor of animal science, has begun studying how grazing management affects the animal’s behavior and the surrounding environment. To complete this research, farmers will use Global Positioning System units to track them and control where they graze.

Russell said he plans to use the pastures of the Rhodes Research Farm to test how different grazing practices impact the environment.

Some cows will only be given access to part of the pasture while others will have access to all of the pasture.

Other things, such as water source location, will also be varied to see if the cows will graze more uniformly.

Russell plans to use GPS units to track the cows’ movement in hopes of understanding why the animal behaves the way it does.

“We want to see how behavior is affected,” Russell said.

Russell said he hopes to figure out how to make grazing more uniform, which relieves some stress on the environment.

Over-grazing is detrimental to stream beds because of erosion. The problem stems from the lack of plants and a defined root system to hold the soil in place, Russell said.

“There is a time to graze and a time to rest,” said Dean Anderson, a New Mexico State University research animal scientist.

Due to cost restrictions — each GPS collar costs about $3,000 — only one cow will be tracked at a time.

The collars record various information about the animal being tracked, such as its location, heart-rate and temperature.

“Financially, we have to work with a limited number of animals,” Russell said.

He said he hopes to “select the cows that represent the rest of the herd.”

Anderson is also using GPS for pasture management.

He is taking it a step further and setting up virtual fences with the GPS collars.

When the animal gets too close to the virtual boundaries, the collar will emit a sound in an attempt to scare the animal away from the boundary.

He said the GPS unit is also able to tell which way the cow is facing at any time.

If the sound doesn’t work, then a mild shock will be used to stop the animal.

The shock is humane, Anderson said.

The collars use a “ramped series of cues” that start off light and work their way up to more severe, Anderson said.

This is to limit the amount of stress on the animal. If cattle are unresponsive to the cues, the stimulation will eventually stop.

The overall goal of projects like this is to maintain equilibrium between the cattle and environment, Anderson said. He said he believes this is the future of managing pastures and how cows and cattle graze.

“In a few years this will be the norm rather than theory,” he said.