Notes from the proving ground: testing tags on 20,000 acres
What a real, off-grid working ranch teaches you that a lab can't — retention, solar, and the rare events that matter.
You can design a cattle tag on a bench. You can only prove it on a ranch.
We test on a 20,000-acre working ranch in New Mexico—real cattle, hard weather, no coverage. It’s the same rough, off-grid country the tag is built for, and it surfaces the things a lab never will.
Retention is the hard problem
The first number we’re proving is whether the tag stays on the animal for years. Cow ears are rough on hardware; the enclosure and attachment are the whole game. We’ll publish the retention numbers, good or bad.
The rare events are everything
A sick or calving animal moves differently—and a solar tag is most power-starved exactly when those rare events happen. Capturing them reliably, on a tiny energy budget, is the difference between a location toy and a research instrument. That’s what the proving ground is for.
