An effective grazing plan relies on an accurate inventory of your animals and their dry matter demands. This allows you to accurately balance pasture demand with pasture availability while supporting animal health and productivity. Dry matter demand depends on the type of livestock, their size and stage of development, and level of production/gain. Generally, this is expressed as a percentage of the animal’s body weight which can be calculated to yield DM lbs/head/day. You must also consider the non-pasture dry matter the animals consume to calculate the amount of just pasture needed. Use the worksheets and resources below to calculate these for your farm and to learn more about factors that impact animal dry matter intake.
Worksheets
Use these worksheets to create an animal and dry matter demand for your farm to use in your grazing planning process.
Step 1: Determine Livestock Daily Dry Matter Demand
Step 2: Determine Livestock Daily Pasture Demand
- Grazing Planning Worksheet – All Steps (PDF)
- Grazing Planning Excel Workbook Template (XLS)
Additional Resources
Additional resources regarding dry matter demand of various classes of livestock can be found below: