Pasture Watch™ by Fairport Technologies.
PastureWatch™ has three useful modules which can assist graziers in
their decision making, plus a basic farm mapping facility. Subscribers
to the paddock level Pastures from Space™ service will be entitled to
unlock and use PastureWatch. People who have our PAM with Mapping software
will find much of the functionality of PastureWatch built into PAM with
Mapping… plus a whole lot more. Whether you have PAM with Mapping or
not, PastureWatch is used to perform the downloading of Pastures from
Space data and also to access farm maps with paddock coloured by pasture
growth rate values.
PastureWatch displays the downloaded PGR™ data in the form of graphs.
Each paddock’s pasture growth rates and forecasted pasture growth rates
can be viewed and compared with other paddocks, the farm average and
data for the selected paddock from previous years. Pasture utilisation
and pasture cover can also be shown graphically.
As Paddock boundaries are used to extract the pasture growth rates for
a farmer’s paddocks from the Pastures from Space™ database, a subscriber
must firstly have their paddocks drawn or “digitised” to create these
paddock boundaries (“polygons”). This will be done by a PastureWatch
consultant using an aerial photograph or a satellite image. Once the
polygons have been registered into the Pastures from Space system, the
grazier simply clicks on the download button on the main screen of PastureWatch
on a weekly basis. All the hard work is done in the background. The PGR
graphs in PastureWatch are automatically updated.
The second PastureWatch module is a pasture budgeting system which doubles
as a paddock by paddock grazing planner. The planning process involves
setting up some default background information like the paddock pasture
growth (or decline) rates for each month for a twelve month period and
the daily intake of a livestock unit (DSE) on a monthly basis. These
default values can be altered to suit farmer’s local conditions.
The farmer’s stock classes (eg. dry ewes, pregnant ewes, weaners, wethers
etc) their tallies and DSE ratings are entered on a monthly basis for
the twelve month budget period. The stock classes are then allocated
to paddocks. Graphs are produced which display pasture supply and demand.
Pasture deficits can be overcome by either supplementary feeding or nitrogen
applications or a mix of both. An interactive system which will calculate
the rate per head for each supplementary feed type or the rate per hectare
of nitrogenous fertilisers is included. Pasture surpluses are carried
over into subsequent months. As the year unfolds, the Pastures from Space™
data can be shown on the budget graph to give an actual versus budget
comparison.
The third PastureWatch™ module is a simple Green Feed Planner system
which was developed by the WA Department of Agriculture and has been
incorporated with their permission. The system enables a farmer to calculate
stocking rates, paddock sizes, mob sizes and grazing periods to achieve
desired outcomes. It answers questions like:
• What stocking rate is required for wethers to gain weight in a 150
Ha paddock over the next 2 weeks? Or …
• What paddock area is required to run 2000 wethers so they maintain
their live weight and retain the paddock FOO at 1500 Kg DM/Ha Or…
As an added bonus, subscribers to Pastures from Space™ will be able to
view maps of their farms and paddocks via a button on the main Pasture
Watch™ screen. The paddocks are coloured by the pasture growth rate value
for a chosen period. This is an online (internet) service is only available
to subscribers and is only accessible via PastureWatch.
Pastures from Space subscribers who are running Fairport’s PAM QA Plus
software will find the PGR data and graphs in their PAM program as well
as extra reports in the map reporting section. Paddocks on the farm map
are coloured according to the PGR and FOO Levels. New versions of PAM
will also include the new pasture budgeting and grazing planning system.
PAM users will still require the PastureWatch software to access the
Pastures from Space data and to use the Green Feed Planner system.
