PastureBase and your phone: measure grass without walking every field
Spring is the season where grass measurement actually pays back. Get it right now and you're making better decisions on fertiliser, grazing rotation, and turnout timing for the next six months. Get it wrong and you're guessing.
PastureBase Ireland is the national grass measurement platform backed by Teagasc. It's free. It works on your phone. And most farmers who've tried it once keep using it.
Here's how to set it up properly — ten minutes of work that pays back every week through the grazing season.
What PastureBase actually does
You record a grass measurement from each paddock — either by walking it with a plate meter or by entering an estimate — and PastureBase does the maths. It tells you your farm cover, your average growth rate, and how many days of grazing you have ahead of you at your current stocking rate.
The Teagasc Grass10 benchmarking data shows that farmers who measure grass weekly utilise on average 1.5 tonnes more dry matter per hectare annually than farmers who don't. That's not an AI claim — that's from the national dataset.
Setting it up: the three steps
Step one: Register at pasturebase.ie. You'll need your herd number. Takes five minutes. If you've already registered but forgotten your login, the password reset works fine — just use the email you signed up with.
Step two: Add your farm. Enter your paddocks, either by importing a map from your LPIS data on agfood.ie (the faster option) or by manually entering your paddock list and sizes. Do this once and you don't touch it again unless you change field boundaries.
Step three: Do your first measurement. Open the app on your phone, select the paddock, enter the grass cover reading. If you don't have a plate meter, enter your best visual estimate — imperfect data is better than no data. The system calibrates over time.
The phone workflow
The mobile interface isn't slick by any standard, but it does the job. Log your measurements as you walk the farm — paddock by paddock. Takes about twenty minutes for a typical dairy farm once you're in the habit. The cover map updates in real time.
One practical tip: measure on the same day each week and at roughly the same time. Consistency matters more than precision. Your growth rate calculations only make sense if the intervals are regular.
What it doesn't do
PastureBase won't make the grazing decision for you. It gives you the numbers — your Teagasc advisor or your own experience interprets them.
If you're new to grass measurement, the Teagasc Grass10 resources are worth reading alongside setting this up. The tool only works as well as your understanding of what the numbers mean.
A note on grass management decisions: PastureBase is a data tool, not an advisory service. For grazing management advice specific to your farm system, talk to your Teagasc advisor. Find your local office →
Sources
- PastureBase Ireland — National grass measurement platform data and methodology
- Teagasc Grass10 Programme — Grass measurement targets and benchmarking data
- Bord Bia Pasture Profit Index — Context for grass utilisation benchmarks
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