<iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-PHTV9K7" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">
Loading
Skip to Main Content
Product cover image for Wilsey Ranch: Virtual Fencing

Wilsey Ranch: Virtual Fencing

Steven Hyde, Corissa Cassity, Chad Coffman, Darcy Fudge Kamal

Product #:W48820
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Setting:United States, 2025
Details:Case (PDF) • 9 pages • 2026-06-12

Subjects:

StrategyEntrepreneurship

Industries:

Agriculture sector

Geography:

United StatesNorth America
Your Price:$9.71

Purchase this material with a free Educator Account and enjoy more benefits:

  • Free Educator Copy
  • Free Teaching Notes
  • Build your coursepack
  • Discounted academic price

In December 2024, Lisa Wilsey and her mother, Debby, ran a 250-cow operation near Marsing in Southwestern Idaho. With no hired hands, the two-person workforce of Wilsey Ranch was limited when it came to grazing practices, cattle monitoring, and any herd growth. Virtual fencing collars from vendors such as Vence, Halter, and Nofence could replace physical fences with app-based boundaries and give Wilsey Ranch more control over these factors, but the ranch’s canyons and spotty cellular coverage raised reliability concerns, and the investment in virtual fencing was sizable. After past failures with temporary electric fencing and while also considering the ranch’s high-value Wagyu-influenced cattle, Lisa needed to decide whether to pilot, adopt, or delay virtual fencing.

Learning Objectives

This case suits courses in strategic management, by illustrating decision-making under resource constraints where multiple value dimensions compete, as well as agricultural technology, by investigating technology decisions in agriculture where environmental variability and market volatility create uncertainty. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:
  • Evaluate technology adoption decisions under operational constraints where multiple dimensions of value conflict.
  • Analyze how terrain, labour structure, and past experience shape technology fit and adoption risk.
  • Assess strategic options when capital decisions involve trade-offs between growth, stability, and operational flexibility.
  • Examine how technology promises interact with practical implementation barriers in resource-constrained operations.
Loading
Case Study: Wilsey Ranch: Virtual Fencing (English version) | Ivey Publishing