Rangeland Ecology & Management

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GRAZEKEEPER - PLANNING AND RECORD-KEEPING SYSTEM FOR ALL LIVESTOCK GRAZING
Author
Hibbard, Tyrrell
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2015
Body

The Montana Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI) spearheaded the development of GrazeKeeper to address the cumbersome nature of keeping and reviewing grazing records. GrazeKeeper allows ranchers to plan, record, and organize grazing activities in a manner that allows reports to be created and pulled at will. GrazeKeeper is a web-based software program that helps ranchers inventory pastures and livestock, measure degree of grazing on plants, track livestock movements, and most importantly to query reports for livestock movements by pasture or management group, while providing a visual and actual record of available forage. Ultimately, GrazeKeeper organizes grazing data to help ranchers determine if planned livestock movements are sustaining, impeding, or stimulating the grazing resource on the ranch. The program acts as a planning tool for livestock movements, and allows users to provide as much additional detail as desired. GrazeKeeper's planning feature can be adjusted in real-time to allow for any changes in planned management as they occur on the ground, such as drought, fire, or pasture quality. The feature interfaces with a tracking tool to record actual dates, movements, and grazing severity. The program also harnesses the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service to provide automatic weather capture for locations identified with a Google Earth mapping feature. When the plans are in place, the program allows the user to query the input data/information to generate reports by specific pasture and/or management groups. GrazeKeeper will help determine the effectiveness/feasibility of managing grazing lands, allowing managers to make sound decisions and maximize economic returns for managing their ranch. Additional information on GrazeKeeper can be found athttps://www.grazekeeper.com/.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Conference Name
SRM Sacramento, CA