How to measure pasture cover
Pasture cover is the amount of feed standing in a paddock, in kilograms of dry matter per hectare. It is the number every grazing decision starts from — here is how to measure it well.
Why cover is the number that matters
Grazing management is a supply-and-demand problem. Demand is what the herd or flock eats each day. Supply is what is growing plus what is already standing. Pasture cover is the standing part of that equation, and average cover across the farm is the single most useful figure in a grazing week.
When cover runs ahead of demand you have a surplus building — paddocks to skip, silage to make, quality to protect. When it runs behind, you have days to react before the deficit costs production. Neither is visible without measurement.
The main ways to measure it
Visual assessment costs nothing but drifts between people and seasons. Rising plate meters measure compressed height and convert it to cover with a formula — consistent, but the formula assumes sward density. Cut-and-dry quadrats are the reference standard but far too slow for a weekly walk.
Photo-based measurement reads the sward image directly — height, density, colour, species and structure — and estimates cover without a conversion formula. It also returns feed quality (DM%, CP%, MJME, NDF%) from the same photo, which no height-based method can do.
A weekly method that works
Whatever tool you use, the method matters more than the instrument:
- Walk the same round, in the same order, on roughly the same day each week
- Take multiple readings per paddock and use the average — with Pasture Ai you can average up to 10 photo assessments
- Keep technique consistent: same photo height and angle, even light, representative parts of the paddock
- Record every walk. One reading is a number; a season of readings is a growth curve
From cover to decisions
Cover becomes useful when it is compared with demand. A feed wedge — paddocks ranked by cover — shows grazing order and looming surpluses. A feed budget puts cover and growth rate against herd demand to give days of feed ahead and area per day.
Pasture Ai builds both from your weekly walk automatically, so the measurement flows straight into the decision without a spreadsheet in between.