Not yet. Everything opens in the first quarter of 2027: finding a missing animal, estate visits and the other inspections, checking fence lines, counting livestock and feed, scanning fields for fawns and newborns, field application, cleaning solar panels and clearing snow from them, and anything flown from a dock on your property. You can tell us about your property on the contact form now. Or tick the box at the end of that form for one email when we open.
We fly drones over ranches, farms, estates and solar arrays. On a ranch we find missing animals, check fence lines, count livestock and feed, and scan fields for fawns and newborns. On a field we apply fertilizer or seed, and on an array we clean the panels. And we inspect solar arrays, barns and roofs, easements, and ponds and other water.
Every one of those jobs gets flown over our own fields at Three Waters Farm in Ghent before I offer it for yours.
Yes. An estate visit looks over a large property's buildings, its heat pumps and generator, its trees and grounds, its pond and water, its fences and its solar panels in one go, after a storm or on a schedule, and you get one report with an answer for each. After a first walk of the property with you or your caretaker, nobody needs to be home when we fly. Our own home at Three Waters is an estate as well as a farm, so every check is flown there first. A working farm can have one too, for its house, barns, pond and fences.
Me, Tim Piastrelli. The Herdsmen is a one-person operation: the person you first speak to plans the job, flies it and reviews what we find. There's no call center and no subcontracted pilot. A dock on your property flies its schedule by itself, so routine work there doesn't wait on me making the drive. If I'm ill, a visit waits until I'm well.
Every flight is logged, and no commercial work flies without the FAA authorization it needs.
We bring more than the drone. Thermal cameras find animals at night and at first light. Our models pick out animals, trees on a fence and dirty panels. A person here marks breaks and open gates, and releases what we find before it reaches you. Every job is kept beside the last one. You don't spend the morning flying and the evening going through the video.
Send the request form or call (518) 227-0028. We reply within one business day, usually to set up a short call about the property: acreage, livestock, crops, buildings or panels, access and timing. Then you get a plan and a quote, with no obligation.
Before we open, we can still talk your property through. The plan and the quote come closer to opening.
The property and the drive decide most of the price, so there isn't a rate card here. Every job is quoted and agreed in writing before anything flies. The one exception is an urgent search for a missing animal. That can start on what we agree by phone, with the quote in writing straight after. A quote can cover one job or a whole season.
For solar, a quote starts from a flat charge, and the rest goes by how many panels there are or how big the array is.
One walk of the property with you or your caretaker: the boundary, the fields or buildings that matter, where the stock usually is, and what you want to know. The flight plan is built from that. After the first job, a repeat is a phone call.
For a fence sweep, the line itself, from a map, a walk or a first flight you check. We fly that same path every time, so each sweep compares with the last.
For a count of the whole property, your herd records: how many of each animal you keep. The count is checked against them, so tell us when you buy or sell stock, or an animal dies.
For a field spray job, the water, somewhere flat and clear to land and load, and access close enough to work from.
From Ghent, in Columbia County, New York, out to about 100 miles, and we take one-off jobs and emergencies anywhere in that. Inside 50 miles, a standing schedule can be daily, weekly or monthly, and a same-day call is realistic. That ring takes in Columbia, Albany, Rensselaer, Greene, Dutchess, Schenectady, Schoharie and Ulster counties in New York, Berkshire and Hampshire in Massachusetts, and Litchfield in Connecticut.
From 50 to 100 miles, a schedule is weekly or monthly, and seasonal work like an application day is planned ahead. An emergency or a search goes that far too, but the drive is longer. Out there, a dock on your property starts to make more sense than the drive. The coverage map shows every county and its ring. If you're farther out still, ask anyway. We'll quote it or say plainly that someone closer would serve you better.
Once we open, inside 50 miles, realistically yes: a fence sweep after a storm, or a head count before turnout. Farther out, we still come for an emergency, but the round trip takes most of a day, so regular work there is planned ahead.
If an animal goes missing once we're open, don't wait on the form. Call (518) 227-0028 and we'll talk through the fastest way to get a drone in the air.
For ranch work, yes. The Matrice 30T and the Matrice 4TD both carry thermal cameras. For a search, dawn, dusk and after dark are the best times. Once the ground has cooled and the animal hasn't, thermal picks out what a flashlight walks past.
Field application and solar cleaning run on the Agras T100, which has no thermal camera. Those jobs are timed around wind, rain and temperature.
Weather, airspace, FAA rules and safety. Wind and rain stop spraying and spreading. In wind, what we spray or spread can drift onto a neighbor's field. A storm that brings a fence down is usually one we can't fly in, so that sweep waits until it's safe and legal to launch.
Open pasture is usually straightforward. Near houses or a road, FAA rules limit flying over people. Near an airport, some airspace needs permission before we can take off. We check the airspace before taking a job and won't fly where we aren't permitted. No exceptions, even in an emergency.
A search ends in a phone call the moment a sighting is confirmed, then a text with a map link to where the animal is, and a photo when we have one to send.
A fence sweep gives you a list of spots to look at, each with a photo, a GPS location and what we found there. You can copy the list and send it to whoever is going out with the wire.
A count is a head count of each species, with a photo of each group and the animals marked. A feed count gives your bales by kind and your silage as an estimated volume, beside your last feed count.
A field application produces a record of what was applied, where, when, at what rate and in what conditions. A solar cleaning produces a record of what was cleaned and when, with before-and-after imagery.
An inspection gives you each thing we found, where it is, and a close photo and a thermal photo of it. A seasonal scan is a call or a text as each field is flown, with a map link to each find.
An email tells you when a report is ready. Each record is kept with the earlier ones for the same fence line, field, array or building.
Cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, goats, donkeys and alpacas, on your ground or the ground around it. They don't all show up the same on thermal. Cattle, horses and donkeys are the easiest: big, warm and usually in the open. Fleece hides most of a sheep's or an alpaca's body heat. Mud dulls the heat of a pig that has been wallowing. That can mean a longer search, flown closer. We'll tell you what to expect for your animal before we launch.
We fly a count high enough not to move the herd, and low enough to tell a cow from a calf. At that height the drone is quiet. My own cattle and sheep pay it no attention, because it never comes down low over them. If some of your stock are flighty, tell us when we walk the property before the first flight: the flight plan is built from that conversation.
Approximate, not exact to the last animal. A count comes back by species. When it covers the whole property, we check it against your herd records and point out any difference. A count that comes up short is often the first sign an animal is out.
Animals under trees in full leaf or inside a barn aren't in the frame, so a count is only of what's outside and in view. A herd bunched shoulder to shoulder reads as fewer than it is, so we fly it again from another angle before sending a number. I count my own cattle and sheep this way. A pass takes a few minutes, where it used to cost me a morning on foot.
A visit means we bring a drone out from Ghent and launch it on your property: the Matrice 30T for a search, a sweep, a count or an inspection, and for an estate visit the 30T or the Matrice 4TD, launched by hand or from the dock on our truck. You book a visit per job. After that first walk of the property, you don't need to be there when we fly. A dock on your property is a DJI Dock 3 with a Matrice 4TD that stays there. It flies itself, on a schedule or when we start it remotely over Starlink. Nobody makes the drive for routine work. The dock is part of the service: we own it, and we pay for its Starlink. If the service ends, we take it back.
A dock needs electricity where it stands, which you provide, and a clear patch to stand on. The farther out you are, the more sense it makes. Either way, a person can take control at any time.
No. We don't apply pesticides or herbicides. We apply organic fertilizer and seed, and that's what I'd steer you toward. They're safer around livestock, water and the neighbors' land. My family's farm is certified organic, so I know what that line costs to hold, and I won't be the reason someone else loses it.
If your window is too short for organic, a conventional fertilizer or conventional seed may be what it takes, and I'll say so before we fly. If a job needs something else, ask, and we'll tell you whether we're the right operator for it. On solar panels it's deionized water, with a mild cleaner only where the panel maker allows one and the ground under the array can take it.
Dust and pollen come off with deionized water, flown in overlapping passes across the array. That needs mild weather, well above freezing, and no water goes on a frozen panel. Before the first wash, we go through your panel maker's cleaning guidance with you.
Snow is blown off by the drone's own downwash as we fly low across the array. Dry, recent snow lifts readily. Wet, heavy snow doesn't, and neither does a refrozen crust. We'll tell you which you've got before flying. The window is right after the snow stops. Both jobs come with before-and-after imagery.
Yes, any size, from the panels on a barn roof to a solar farm. We fly an array in strong sun with thermal and zoom cameras, and mark each panel or string that reads differently from its neighbors, where it sits in the array, with photos. Thermal shows that a panel is different, not why, so an electrician or your installer confirms a fault before anything is replaced. Solar Inspection has the rest.
No. We don't mow, graze, spray weeds, clear brush or cut fire breaks, on a farm, an estate or around solar panels. We show where the trouble is: on an array, a Solar Inspection marks the panels that grass or trees have grown up to shade, and an estate visit marks trees down and dead patches of lawn, so whoever keeps the place knows where to go.
We look for warm spots on the outside of stacks and bale rows with thermal, which shows you where to put a probe. Thermal can't see into the middle of a stack, so a probe is still the real test. It is part of Barn & Building Checks.
Yes, at first light, with thermal, while the grass is still cooler than the animal. Each fawn or nest we find is pinned on a map and sent to you as each field is flown, so you can mow around it or leave that patch for later. We don't handle them. Before you start, we fly each field again and tell you what that flight found, and which fields we couldn't read well. We look for newborns the same way when your animals give birth. Seasonal Animal Scans has the rest.
In winter, with the leaves down, a limb or a tree across a main line of sap tubing shows from above, and we mark each one. The thinner laterals to each tap don't show reliably, so we check main lines only. It is flown the way a fence line is, so it is on Fence Line Checks.
It's tagged with the job, the time and the place. What we find in it builds your property's history, so you can follow a fence line or a head count over time. It also trains our detection models, which recognize livestock species, trees down on a fence and how dirty a panel is. They're built for that, not for identifying people. A photo of a property can show the people who live or work there, or who are visiting when we fly; if someone in one asks us, we'll delete it.
We don't sell personal information and we don't use it for advertising. Ask us to delete the imagery from your property and we will, unless we're required to keep it for legal, insurance or regulatory reasons. The record of the work stays: when and where we flew, and what we found, written down without the pictures. The Privacy Policy has the rest.
Our aircraft are made by DJI, and its software can hold a copy of a flight's photos on their way to us. If your site needs its photos kept off DJI's cloud, tell us: we fly it with a drone we launch by hand, and upload the photos straight to our own storage on Amazon Web Services. Any flight from a dock, the one on our truck or one on your property, sends them through DJI's software. That covers the photos and video; the Privacy Policy says what else the maker's software handles.
Only about your own job: arranging a flight, telling you we're on our way, or passing on what we found. There's no text message program and no marketing texts, and we never share your number for marketing. Ask us to stop and we will.
Call (518) 227-0028, or tell us what you need.