2025 Grazing Season Update

July 16th

Hello, CARMers!

We’re tracking the radar today, hoping the storm runs over us, fingers crossed!

Review the previous update.

Let’s dive into the details

Here’s the CARM allocation:

Highlights of Happenings

Station Rainfall:

Rainfall_Total
Jul 0.19
YTD 7.05

Cumulative Rainfall (in)

Rainfall Distribution

Nicole Kaplan shared in a scientist meeting, the difference compared to Historical is such a unique view!

Soil Moisture

Station Biomass:

CPER Viewer Maps

Increased threshold to 550 lbs/ac

TRM Biomass:

CARM Biomass

CARM Rep Longspur Zone Prairie Dog Zone Short Tall

CARM 1

HighHawk & Slayton

CARM 2

CenterCreek & PrairieRidge

CARM 3

OwlCreek & SaltTree

Livestock

Crude Protein:

Crude Protein ranges in percent (%) for CARM and TRM.
Reps Short Tall
CARM 1 - HighHawk & Slayton 8.10- 8.62 8.16
CARM 2 - CenterCreek & PrairieRidge 7.87 - 8.35 8.02
CARM 3 - OwlCreek & SaltTree 7.69 - 7.99 7.99
TRM 7.52 - 8.32 7.79 - 8.08

701x: Where the steers were the last 7 days.

I noticed some interesting shifts in the heat maps, so I included both last week and this week.

CARM 1 - HighHawk & Slayton

HighHawk, this week.

HighHawk, last week

Slayton, this week.

Slayton, last week.

CARM 2 - CenterCreek & PrairieRidge

CenterCreek, this week.

CenterCreek, last week.

PrairieRidge, this week. They’re completely avoiding a good chunk of their pasture.

PrairieRidge, last week.

CARM 3 - OwlCreek & SaltTree

OwlCreek, this week.

OwlCreek, last week.

SaltTree, this week

SaltTree, last week.

Grazing Management:

CPER Viewer Longspur Habitat

Last Date Recorded

[1] "2025-07-09"
Last_Week This_Week Trigger_Status
CenterCreek 392 362 No change
HighHawk 536 489 No change
OwlCreek 394 365 No change

The table above is showing the remote-sensing values populated by CPERViewer.

Management.Decisions
2025-07-07 This would have triggered a move for 7/10, however, the NASA data wasn't available and the team discussed the other triggers and voted it was appropriate to stay one more week. Data made available 7/14.
2025-07-09 Shift 33 steers (and 4 ,701x tags) from HH to Slayton, no other changes but declining biomass in all longspur management zones. Data made available on 7/14, moving steers on 7/17

Note: Data made available on

Up & Coming

  • Moving subgroup from HighHawk to Slayton July 17th
  • 28-Day Weigh July 24th

Desktop Field View

One of the cool new tools CPER has acquired this season, a RanchBot, the tank monitoring tool.

SUCH a cool tool, but we are working out the kinks of having 24/7 monitoring tools. For example, this image was taken in response to a notification that the tank was too low, however, as we found onsite, the tank was fully operational.

The “issue” was the whole HighHawk herd had drank from it and I had the water level warning notification set too high. Big thanks to Cash for running out to investigate over the weekend!

Photo Credit: Cash Haun

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