Lost, Strayed or Stolen: What Untracked Stock Really Costs

Ask any grazier and they'll have a story: stock through a downed fence onto the road, a mob that drifted two paddocks over, or a quiet night that ended with empty yards. Livestock straying and theft are persistent, expensive, and — until recently — very hard to get ahead of.

Where the money goes

• The animal itself — a breeding cow or stud ram is hundreds to thousands of pounds.
• The hours: mustering, searching paddocks, driving fence lines, ringing neighbours.
• Welfare losses — an animal cast or caught unseen for a day may not recover.
• Genetics and bloodlines you can't simply re-buy.
• Road-accident liability when stock get out near a highway.

Most of these costs come from one thing: not knowing soon enough. By the time you notice a gap in the count, the animal could be kilometres away or hours into trouble.

Closing the time gap

Tracking doesn't stop a fence going down — but it collapses the time between something going wrong and you knowing about it. A tagged animal that crosses a paddock boundary, or a mob that suddenly scatters, can put an alert on your phone within minutes instead of at the next muster.

That's the job Flockarewe is built for: low-cost LoRa ear tags across the whole mob, collars on the animals that matter most, and Shep — the AI watcher — telling normal grazing from a real problem, day and night.