Understanding your grazing land, its condition and productivity, will help you manage your stock numbers to match pasture supply and minimise stress on stock, pastures, soil and bank balances.
Monitoring pasture condition will help you to notice changes in your pasture landscape early so that you can alter your grazing management to maintain good ground cover and land condition. These grazing land management (GLM) strategies will help ensure your country responds quickly and productively when it rains while reducing soil loss and erosion.
Monitoring your ground cover across your property over time allows you to see what impact past decision and events like stocking rates, fence-placement and fires had on your grazing lands.
Monitoring also includes inspecting and taking photo records on an annual basis, or more frequently if possible, to observe pasture condition, composition and yield. Documenting this information will help you to easily compare with previous seasons.
There are a number of GLM tools available that can help you to understand your grazing land, manage your stocking rates, monitor your land condition and help you understand the influence of season and management decisions on your ground cover.
Which GLM decision support tool is going to be useful for your situation?
Here’s a simple checklist of four tools that may assist you to make informed decisions about grazing, pasture and land management on your property.
Four decision support tools that are useful include: