This article covers what to do if one of your Neckbands stops working for whatever reason.

Problem

Lets start with the scenario where a neckband is fitted to an animal that was actively being contained in a virtual paddock and it suddenly stops working.

The first indications that this has happened is that the 'last updated' time is now a long time ago - this could be many hours, days or even weeks.

If the communication delay is still less than one or two days, there is a possibility that the Neckband may suddenly 'recover' and come back to life. However, once we have not heard from the neckband for more than 3 days, it is safe to assume that this device has failed prematurely.

While the neckband will no longer be actively containing the animal after the EMERGENCY TIMEOUT has elapsed, the eShepherd platform will still show the last active virtual paddock as being ACTIVE. i.e. that virtual paddock will be a solid orange line. The platform may be trying to send instructions to that neckbands to turn off that virtual paddock, but because it never receives a response, it cannot confirm that this virtual paddock has indeed been DEACTIVATED.

This can become very confusing for the user.

In an attempt to alleviate this confusion, the eShepherd platform will automatically 'hide' any neckband that has not communicated in more than 3 days, AND it will 'hide' any virtual paddocks that are 'stuck' on these non-communicating neckbands.

Solution

The only way to resolve these issues is to "unfit' the neckband from the animal on the eShepherd platform. (Do not confuse this with 'unfitting' the neckband from the actual animal!)

There are two ways to do this.

1. You can DELETE the animal, which will remove the record of that animal all together, and the Neckband will revert back to being an 'unfitted' neckband - shown as a triangle. To do this, navigate to the Animals menu, select the animal in question, and then press DELETE in the bottom menu.
2. You can edit the record of that animal, and 'unfit' the neckband. To do this, navigate to the animal menu, select the animal in question, then press 'EDIT' -> 'Edit Single Animal' in the bottom menu. At the top of the screen, you will find a drop-down menu with the current Neckband number. When you click on the drop-down, the first option is 'Unfit'. Select this and press Save. This will remove the neckband from that animal record and put it back into the Unfitted Neckband menu. The animal record will remain on the platform - but will show up with no neckband fitted.

You will need to 'refresh' the eShepherd web app page to see the changes take effect.

Updated on: 15/09/2025