By Shelby Shank
Field Editor

Building robots and feeding cows is exactly what the founders of Smooth Ag Solutions, River McTasney and Hunter Allemand, are known for.

This Texas-based agricultural company launched the V1 Ranch Rover, an autonomous feeder with rangeland capabilities.

McTasney, a Haskell County Farm Bureau member, came up with the idea while he was feeding his cows.

“Growing up in agriculture, I don’t think a lot of people outside of ranching understand that agriculture forces you to be a problem solver,” McTasney said. “You work on your own stuff. You build your own stuff. You have to fix your own stuff. The margins don’t allow for you to outsource outside help and pushes you to solve things on your own.”

A large time commitment for ranchers is feeding cattle, and ranchers know time equals money.

The Ranch Rover was designed with the rancher in mind to be efficient and labor-saving. Smooth Ag Solutions developed a way to augment the task of feeding cattle to save time for ranchers to work on other tasks.

The robot is powered by an internal combustion engine and equipped with a trip hopper that can hold up to one ton of feed. With GPS communications, the Ranch Rover runs off real-time kinematic positioning, allowing the rancher to build geo-fence parameters and set feed times through the GPS.

Ranchers can program the robot to go on “missions” that are scheduled routes for the Ranch Rover to feed cattle on certain routes at certain times. The independent front suspension robot with four-wheel drive can even navigate rough terrain to feed cattle.

The Ranch Rover saves cattle ranchers 15 to 20 hours a week, if not more, from time spent driving around the ranch and calling up cattle, McTasney said. This time saved allows ranchers to work on higher value tasks or spend quality time with their families.

“Ranching is a traditional industry. The Ranch Rover creates an opportunity for ranchers to focus on what really matters, and at the end of the day, it’s the cheapest ranch hand you’ll find,” Allemand said. “Just like we’re traditional in how we work and operate, we view our families in the same way, and that time is really valuable.”

Bringing robotics to more mundane tasks like pasture feeding offers new ways to maximize ranchers’ time and workflow. The Ranch Rover can also collect data on cattle and rangelands to help make management decisions.

Cattle must be fed no matter the weather conditions—rain, sweltering heat or freezing temperatures. The Ranch Rover faces those conditions for ranchers, too.

Labor shortages have plagued agriculture, but Smooth Ag Solutions has embraced those challenges and created solutions through technology.

“When we look at the difference between a ranch and a farm, technology is lacking on the ranch side,” Allemand said. “Most of the investments are in animal health and animal science, not so much tools for ranchers to use. Not everyone can afford to pay someone to feed cattle. We’re giving ranchers another tool to have in their toolbox.”

Smooth Ag Solutions is applying modern technology to traditional ranch practices through the Ranch Rover and paving the way to bridge the gap between traditional agricultural methods and new, modern technology.

“At the end of the day, what we’re doing is taking a bunch of things that already exist and packaging them together to make a new solution tailored specifically to agriculture,” McTasney said. “The biggest challenge is helping ranchers understand how this tool can be integrated on their operation. This tool isn’t replacing the human aspect of ranching and tradition but finding solutions to make ranching better.”

The Ranch Rover isn’t the Mars Rover, but it has piqued the interest of ranchers in the U.S. and those as far as Argentina and Paraguay.

And maybe one day soon you’ll see a large white cattle feeder driving itself in a pasture near you and know that it was developed by a young Texas rancher.