Becca and Ben had the pleasure of learning from Melissa Fery from the OSU Extension service about how to measure the number of tons of forage per acre. She taught us three different methods:

1. “The Plonk Method” – Turns out there is a tool called the aplate meter that you can “plonk” down in various parts of your paddock and it will measure the amount of grass growing. We plonked in about 40 places and took an average.

2. Measuring with a grazing stick. You measure in multiple areas of a paddock to determine the average height of forage.

3. Determine the density of forage by taking samples of grass in multiple areas, drying and weighing them.

The idea is we can use this information to decide when grazing should be started, to predict how many days a certain paddock can feed the herd, when to move our animals to another pasture and average growth rates. We found that even though most of our pastures are not where we want them to be, we are pretty amazed that we are able to support our herd from them and are excited to increase the forage as time goes on.