Cereal rye can be an excellent early spring grazing resource. However, because it grows rapidly, it can be challenging to apply the right grazing pressure to optimize animal performance and maintain forage quality.
Have you ever asked yourself:
- How many animals should I put in that pasture?
- How long can they stay?
- How much forage is actually out there?
To help answer these common questions, we developed Snap2Graze, a web-based decision support tool designed specifically for cereal rye pastures.
What is Snap2Graze?
Snap2Graze is a web-based tool that estimates available forage mass of cereal rye using pictures taken with your smartphone. The tool analyzes canopy cover in the image and coverts it into an estimate of forage availability.
The goal of Snap2Graze is to support faster, more informed, and data-driven grazing decisions.
Using Snap2Graze, you can estimate:
- Forage mass (pounds of dry matter per acre)
- Suggested stocking rate
- Number of grazing days available for a given herd size
How to Access and Use Snap2Graze
Snap2Graze is available online at: http://go.unl.edu/snap2graze
The tool is web-based and works directly from your smartphone, no app download required.
To use Snap2Graze:
- Take a photo of your cereal rye pasture from about chest height, pointing straight down at the plants.
- If you have cell service, upload the photo directly from the field. If you do not have service, simply save the photo and upload it later once you have signal.
- Review the estimated forage mass, suggested stocking rate, and estimated grazing days.
For best results, take multiple photos across the pasture and use the average value. A detailed user guide with photo instructions and management considerations is available directly on the website.
Important considerations and limitations
Snap2Graze is currently designed and calibrated for cereal rye pastures and performs best when cereal rye is immature, leafy stage. Accuracy declines as rye matures and begins to head out. As with any decision-support tool, Snap2Graze should complement, not replace, producer experience and observation.
Snap2Graze provides a simple way to turn what you see in the field into numbers you can use to guide stocking and rotation decisions. By helping quantify forage availability in rapidly growing cereal rye, it can support better timing of cattle moves and improve grazing efficiency. If you are grazing cereal rye this spring, consider using Snap2Graze as part of your management toolbox.
This effort is an output of funding resources supported by USDA-SARE through the grant GNC24-397, Smart Grazing: A Web-Based Solution for Pasture Management.
