Developed by researchers at the University of Missouri (UM), PaddockTrac is an ATV-mounted sensor that measures forage height. When it’s paired with the MU Grazing Wedge it estimates paddock biomass, pasture growth rates and average pasture cover. The sensor takes 50 readings of forage density per second.
“It’s a sonic sensor. It’s like a radar on a submarine. It’s shooting out sound waves and whatever reflects back is telling you what’s out there. The way this works is shooting the sensor radar down and we’re having a reflection coming back so that’s telling us the height. We know how long it takes for it to hit the ground, and now we’re measuring the distance,” said Dr. Stacey Hamilton, an animal science Extension specialist, at a Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship (DGA) online roundtable. Calibration of forage height then allows the MU Grazing Wedge to estimate forage biomass.
The sensor is Bluetooth enabled and connects to a smartphone app where the data are processed. The end product – a grazing wedge – visually represents the quantity of forage dry matter available per acre or hectare at the time the measurements are taken.
According to Hamilton, quantifiable information can help grass farmers make better decisions about when and where to graze. His mantra is “measure, monitor, manage.” In his opinion, the PaddockTrac is advantageous to other pasture measuring devices (like a rising plate meter and C-Dax) because there is less room for operator error, and it’s faster.
In 2023, DGA was awarded a five-year, $4.7 million grant through USDA’s Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). The grant is titled “Implementing Precision Ag Tech to Expand the Participation of Small Grazing Dairy Farms in Climate-Smart Commodities.”
Currently, there are 19 farms enrolled in the program who are collecting data with a PaddockTrac. The farms are located in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Maryland and Maine. Sarah Ficken, grants manager at DGA, said that 16,243 acres have been measured with PaddockTracs during the first half of the 2024 growing season.
The PaddockTrac system is helping to better measure the composition and quality of grazed grasses. Photo courtesy of Stacey Hamilton
PaddockTrac data are not just intended for apprentices or experienced graziers looking to improve their pasture management. Through the PCSC project, DGA will use PaddockTrac to monitor above ground biomass changes and correlate these measurements with changes in below ground carbon stores. To accomplish this, intensive soil sampling will take place on a subset of the farms involved in the grant.
“We will look at above ground biomass and correlate it to below ground carbon stores and potentially some other environmental benefits,” Ficken said.
Ultimately, according to USDA, the goal of these climate-smart grants – there are about 140 PCSC projects in the U.S. – is to expand markets for America’s climate-smart commodities, leverage the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart production and provide direct, meaningful benefits to production agriculture.
To that end, the next stage of the DGA grant is to create a traceability protocol for use in the climate-smart marketplace. “This piece is really important for building a climate-smart marketplace – having a protocol in place that’s transferable and that allows data to be transferred from one unit of milk up to that final product. It allows the end user or the final product producer to make environmental claims that are actually valid,” Ficken said.
Hamilton also hopes to use data from the grant participating farms to further refine the equations which are used to calculate forage density. Currently, the equations are based on prevalent forages in Missouri where the app was developed: fescue with clover and ryegrass with clover. He said he was less comfortable with the equations for mixed grass species more common to northern tier states. This is accomplished by farmers in those areas cutting strips within the pasture system and analyzing the samples for species composition and dry matter yield.
DGA is still enrolling eligible dairy farms who utilize managed grazing into the grant program. Participating farms will be provided an annual payment for acres enrolled in the project. For more information visit dga-national.org or contact ashley@dga-national.org.
by Sonja Heyck-Merlin
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