Lost Pet & Livestock Drone Search

If your animal is missing right now, call 630-465-4539. Call as soon as you can — the search area grows the longer an animal is out, and we would rather hear from you early than perfectly timed.

We fly a DJI Matrice 4T carrying a thermal camera that sees body heat in tall grass, timber, creek bottoms, brush piles and drainage tile — cover where a scared animal hides and where people walking the ground go right past it.

See what it actually looks like — the footage from the night we found Bear →

Before we get there

Four things that tend to matter more than anything else, and none of them cost money.

Do not chase. A frightened dog runs from everyone, including the people it loves. Chasing pushes the search area outward in every direction and undoes the work.

Go quiet. Large groups calling its name usually push a scared animal further out rather than bringing it in. One or two familiar people, sitting still, does more.

Put something of home at the last place you saw it. Food, water, and a worn piece of your clothing or its own bedding. Animals in flight mode often circle back to a scent they know, frequently overnight.

Tell people. The county animal control and local shelters, the police non-emergency line, and whichever neighborhood Facebook group people in your area actually read. Most animals are found by a neighbor, not by a searcher.

When we fly

Thermal reads the difference in temperature between an animal and what is around it. Night and the hour before sunrise usually give the widest gap, so a good share of this work happens after dark — a call at nine at night is not a bad time to call.

Daylight searches find animals too. Shade, cloud cover, cool weather, timber and creek bottoms all hold that gap open, and a moving animal is easier to pick up than a still one at any hour. Plenty of ground is worth flying in daylight, and being out there in daylight also rules terrain out, which matters more than people think.

Conditions, cover and how long it has been missing all change the answer. Tell us what you have and we will work out the timing with you rather than have you guess at it.

Night flying under FAA Part 107 requires anti-collision lighting visible for three statute miles. Ours carries it, and if the search area sits in controlled airspace we handle the authorization.

What it costs

$350	up to 2 hours on site
$450	up to 3 hours on site
$150/hr	after that, and only if you say yes first

A $100 deposit holds the flight and comes off the total. The balance is due when we arrive.

Travel. The first 30 driving miles from Newark are included. Past that it is $2 a mile, counted one way rather than round trip.

Return visits are quoted separately. Sometimes the right answer is to come back the following night, and that should be your call rather than a meter running.

What we need from you

• The point it was last seen, and roughly what time
• Size, color, and breed if you know it
• Whether it will come to a stranger, or only to you
• What the ground is like — open pasture, standing corn, timber, subdivision
• Somewhere we can stand with a clear view of the sky

If you can be there while we fly, be there. When we spot something warm in the brush, you are the one who can call it and have it answer.

Livestock too

Cattle through a fence, a heifer that went off to calve somewhere you cannot see her, horses loose after a storm. Same camera, and generally an easier target than a dog — bigger, warmer and less inclined to hide.

What thermal will not do

It does not see through a roof, a wall, a culvert pipe or a dense summer canopy. It reads heat that reaches the camera.

It also does not identify. A warm shape in the brush is a warm shape — deer, coyote, raccoon and your dog all glow the same. Telling them apart is what the zoom camera and the flying are for, and it is why having you on the ground with us helps.

Call

630-465-4539 · [email]

Based at 16100 Newark Rd, Newark, Illinois. We cover Kendall, LaSalle, DeKalb, Grundy, Kane and Will counties, and we will travel further for the right search — ask.

Our other thermal work — search and rescue support, roof and solar surveys, agricultural thermal →