Using livestock to efficiently achieve management goals requires melding animal behavior with mechanical and electronic equipment.  Practices such as autonomously obtaining individual animal liveweight when combined with individual animal electronic identification can produce numerous cost saving advantages by bringing together cause and effect events in a meaningful time frame that allows for proactive management intervention.  Other technologies such as fluorometry makes it possible to rapidly determine what free-ranging animals are eating including those plants that may be toxic to an animal's health.  Soon virtual fencing will be commercially available making the spatial and temporal control of animals in real time a reality. All of these evolving technologies when used appropriately will foster low stress animal handling, the keystone in realizing optimum free-ranging animal management goals.