What does Pasture Coach Do?
Pasture Coach ITC is personal computer based software that backups data on the internet. Otherwise known as "In The Cloud" shortened to ITC.
Once a farm is setup with paddocks and paddock areas, regular pasture cover walks are entered.
Pasture growth rates and average pasture covers are reported – this is the basic stuff.
But Pasture Coach ITC goes beyond this and has tools to record individual paddock yields, annual pasture growth, graphs of pasture covers and graphs of average pasture growth rates.
Then there are a number of management tools that help the day to day decisions.
We get rave reviews on the Feed Wedge predictor tool and the rotation calculator becomes an everyday item to test thinking and plan.
How much does Pasture Coach cost?
- The annual license fee for Pasture Coach in the Cloud is $175 including GST per farm. No fee for 3rd parties –the license holder can add you to their farm, all you need to do is to sign up so you are available to add as a user to a farm.
- If you have a previous version of Pasture Coach and wish to upgrade please send your backup to support@pasturecoachnz.co.nz and we will convert your data for free.
What's New
District and Region Reporting
Very soon Pasture Coach will be automatically presenting the average pasture cover and average pasture growth rate for farms in your district and in your region.
As part of the registration process users are requested to confirm the district and region for the farm. Then whenever the farm synchronises this information goes into the Pasture Coach community database.
Pasture Coach Mobile Application
We have a mobile app for smart phones. Both Android and Apple compatible.
With Pasture Coach mobile you can review the results for the last pasture cover walk, enter a pasture cover walk that will synchronise with your PC via the cloud and gives access to the Pasture Coach grazing management tools.
Check out what Pasture Coach can do?
Once setup with paddock number/name and paddock sizes, the farm walks can be entered. Our clients regularly feedback how easy it is to find their way around the program and get data in. As pasture covers the pasture growth rate of individual paddocks is calculated and the user decides if they will be included. Pasture Coach keeps every record and uses to determine how much every paddock grows. After the pasture walk has been entered the reports and tools are ready to use.
- Classic feed wedge – get a view of the pasture cover and immediately see where a surplus or deficit exists.
- Grazing window line – enter the target pre-grazing and residuals to diagnose more closely diagnose the situation and plan a response.
- Rotation calculator – often the first Pasture Coach tool to be utilised. This provides a guide on targets – pre-grazing, residuals, rotation speed, and target re-growth rates.
- Predict Wedge – what will the pasture cover look like before the next round is finished. Enter cow numbers, expected growth and how much grass the cows are expected to eat – then look at what might happen. Good for planning short term management.
- Advanced predict wedge and Conservation tool - when you need to plan for an interim period (4-12 weeks ahead), dropping out paddocks for supplements, crop or new grass. Good for building a flexible pasture management plan.
- Pasture Yield – how much grass is the farm growing? How much is each paddock growing?
- Pasture cover and pasture growth diary – a graph that builds with every farm walk entered creating an excellent summary season on season.
What does Pasture Coach not do, … yet?
We are aware clients would like to see the following additions to Pasture Coach, and in time these will be added.
- Grazing log – we have already trialled Pasture Coach as a tool to record each days activities. This generates immediate feedback on growth and feeding levels. Unfortunately it seems to be a step to far and we will not release this option until there is more demand.
- Feed budget – building a longer term feed budget that includes the use of supplements. At present Pasture Coach only works with grass. We are discussing the integration of Pasture Coach with farm modelling software and hope to announce a “connection” in 2014.
- Direct (wireless) entry from the various tools used to measure pasture covers. This would speed up data entry but as it only takes 5 minutes to enter most walks this has not been a priority.