2025 Grazing Season Update
Hello, CARMers!
This season has already been a wild one.
When we conducted livestock inspections on April 28th the station did not look great and at that point CARM decided to post-pone turn out by two weeks (instead of May 12th, we pushed it out to May 26th). That turned out to be a great decision, the rain fell and vegetation grew, and I felt significantly better about turning out steers.
This is the first year for CARM 3 and we have a few changes to our management guide for the grazing season, let’s recap what the those changes are.
First, we used the CPERViewer tool to estimate via remote sensing the aboveground standing biomass in the Longspur Zone biomass on May 26 (really cool that this technology provided us the ability to make adaptive decisions right before we allocated).
LongspurZones, May 26th
| Pasture | Biomass (lbs/acre) |
|---|---|
| CenterCreek | 470 |
| HighHawk | 569 |
| OwlCreek | 449 |
As a result of those Longspur Zone numbers, here’s the steer allocations, as of Receiving Week.
| Short Grass | Tall Grass |
|---|---|
| HighHawk (108 head) | Slayton (72 head) |
| CenterCreek (137 head) | PrairieRidge (110 head) |
| OwlCreek (111 head) | SaltTree (97 head) |
Let’s translate this cattle-math.
Stocking Rate, in our instance, is defined by Animal Unit Days per acre, and the Stakeholders voted for an initial stocking rate of 6.8 AUD/ac.
However, our pastures are not all equal sizes so here’s how we addressed that.
The steers were allocated to the paired pastures in each CARM rep by proportion of stocking rate. For example, 50% of the SR was the start for each pasture in a rep to begin the grazing season (and this takes into account the acreage differences between the pastures in the pair).
Example:
Number of Head = ((SR * Acres)/Days Grazing)/Animal.Unit.Steer.Equivalent
HighHawk = ((6.8AUD/ac * 1429 ac)/ 112 days)/0.8 = 108 steers
Second, we have made some changes to our cattle move triggers and here’s a brief reminder of those:
Triggers
Animal Behavior
Happy steers Time to move If cattle are “content” If cattle are “pushing fences” If soil moisture or greenness values are increasing If soil moisture or greenness values are decreasing If it has rained recently and/or predictions are high in near-term If it has not rained recently and predictions are low in near-term Weekly assessment of standing biomass in Longspur zone(s) using CPER Viewer
| Biomass (pounds/acre) | Short Grass | Tall Grass |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ 350 | No steers | All steers |
| 350 - 450 | 30% | 70% |
| 450 - 600 | 50% | 50% |
| 600 - 750 | 80% | 20% |
| > 750 | All steers | No steers |
Let’s dive into the details
Here’s the CARM allocation as of June 12th. All CARM are on their Short pastures.
Highlights of Happenings
| Rainfall_Total | |
|---|---|
| Jun | 1.25 |
| YTD | 6.09 |
Cumulative Rainfall (in) - We’re tracking our historical trend!
Rainfall Distribution
Livestock
Here’s the starting weights for the herds.
| On_Weight | |
|---|---|
| CARM_1 | |
| HighHawk | 786 |
| Slayton | 787 |
| CARM_2 | |
| CenterCreek | 784 |
| PrairieRidge | 782 |
| CARM_3 | |
| OwlCreek | 784 |
| SaltTree | 784 |
| TRM | |
| 13W | 777 |
| 15E | 779 |
| 17N | 780 |
| 19N | 784 |
| 1E | 781 |
| 20SE | 782 |
| 24W | 790 |
| 25SE | 777 |
| 31W | 788 |
| 7NW | 777 |
Crude Protein:
It’s a bit rich out there with no old standing there, our first fecal samples will be taken on Tuesday.
CPER Viewer Longspur Habitat
Last Date Recorded
[1] "2025-06-11"| Last_Week | This_Week | Trigger_Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CenterCreek | 623 | 777 | All on short |
| HighHawk | 793 | 1002 | No change |
| OwlCreek | 582 | 714 | 80/20 |
We’re chasing the growing grass!
The Longspur vegetation in HighHawk triggered a move this last week (Thursday June 5th) and we’re moving PrairieRidge and SaltTree June 12th.
Why we’re moving before the technical threshold? Technology Error.
From Sean:
“Bad news: looks like the NASA server is down that processes and uploads images. That’s why we haven’t gotten an image in 10 days. In theory imagery is supposed to be available 1.7 days after it is flown! But recently they have been having server issues. They don’t have an estimated fix time yet, but I will keep checking and let you know if that changes. But I would guess we may not get new imagery for at least a few days, as they will have a backlog to process once the server is back up and running. It has been down since June 1, with some intermittent uploads in the meantime.”
Since it looks like it’s WAY above threshold from boots-on-the-ground, and our scientists work on the fly, Augustine and Derner extrapolated where we might expect the remote sensing to be.
Up & Coming
Fecal sampling June 10th
PrairieRidge moves to CenterCreek
SaltTree moves to OwlCreek
28-Day Weigh June 26th
Desktop Field View
On behalf of the USDA-ARS Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, we thank you all for your continued participation in this project.
Happy Trails,
CPER Crew