Cornerpost Logic

Grazing Planner

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Tell it your pasture and herd, then pick a date: the answer is one plain step. Forecasts are for the county as a whole (Nebraska counties); your own pasture can do better or worse.

1Your pasture

County, acres and type

Find your county on the map

Several pastures of the same type in one county, grazed by one herd? Add up their acres. Different types or counties: enter each one (sign in to save them and see them together on My Ranch).

Your Pasture Compared With the County

The county's grassland grows about the same each normal year.

That's a satellite average of the county's grass, mostly native range. If you know your pasture does better or worse, say so: every answer below scales with it.

Not sure? Leave it at the county. A fertilized brome pasture often grows more; overgrazed or sandy ground often less. How to clip and weigh

2Your herd

What grazes it, and how many

Several kinds (pairs, yearlings, bulls), or cattle and sheep together? Pick A mixed herd above: one row for each kind, or load Herd Planner's herd file. Signed in, My Herd shows the animals on every pasture.

If there's extra grass mid-season, could you take in more animals?
If the grass runs short (optional)

Your two-page grazing estimate, ready for your files, your landlord or your lender. Printing comes with a Grazing Planner subscription, free during the pilot. This is a sample.
How this works, and how sure it is

Grass numbers are pounds of dry forage per acre for a season, from the Rangeland Analysis Platform (satellite estimates, county average). "Normal" is the county's average over the 10 seasons before this one.

Before June 1 nothing forecasts the season's total well, so the app shows a normal year with the spread seasons have had. From June 1 the forecast uses the weather so far and the grass grown so far. Every range and "chance of running short" comes from how far off the same forecast was in earlier seasons (tested on 2011–2025, never on seasons it learned from).

Head counts use a 25% harvest (native range; 30% tame pasture), 913 lb of forage per animal-unit month and a May 1 to October 31 season. The July 1 and August 1 checks weigh the grass already grown against what's still to come. August's check only says keep or sell: taking in more animals that late didn't pay in the tests. The tests are of the grass, in animal units. What a ewe counts as (0.20 of a 1,000 lb cow with her calf, for a ewe with her lamb) comes from extension tables and is not something these tests check.

This is a planning aid, not a promise. Walk your pasture: what you see beats a county average.