Cibo Labs Forage Budget Calculator – User Guide

This tool helps you calculate how many grazing days are available on your farm and/or in your paddocks, based on feed supply, animal demand, and pasture growth. It’s designed to support grazing decisions and help avoid feed shortages.

Welcome to the Cibo Labs Forage Budget Calculator.

Why Forage Budgeting Matters

Using PastureKey for Objective Forage Estimate

Digital Help Panel-Step by Step Guide

1. Select Paddocks

2. Understand the Layout

3. Unusable Biomass (%)

4. Minimum Residual Biomass (Kg DM/Ha)

5. Pasture Growth Rate (Kg DM/ Ha/ Day)

6. Livestock Class, Type and Production status Selection

7. Liveweight & Production levels

8. Animal numbers and Wastage (%)

9. Grazing Days (Auto-generate)

10. Repeat across grazing days.

 

Why Forage Budgeting Matters

Effective forage budgeting is critical to sustainable grazing management. It allows producers to understand how much feed is available, match animal demand with supply, and avoid situations where ground cover is compromised or livestock performance is limited. Without a clear understanding of feed availability, grazing decisions can be reactive rather than proactive—leading to overgrazing, reduced pasture recovery, and increased reliance on supplementary feeding.

Using PastureKey for Objective Forage Estimates

The Cibo Labs PastureKey service provides producers with access to accurate, reliable, and objective data to support pasture and grazing management. By combining satellite imagery with advanced analytics, PastureKey offers up-to-date assessments of pasture biomass, growth rates, and ground cover at a 10m² resolution. This ensures your forage budget starts from the best available estimate of current conditions—removing the guesswork from grazing decisions.

 

Digital Help Panel- Step-by-Step Guide

Select the Type and Production System Forage Budget Calculator that represents your business.

- Select your calculator type i.e Farm or Paddock level calculators.

- Select the production system calculator you prefer -

• Animal Equivalent (AE)- Cattle only OR
• Dry Sheep Equivalent (DSE) - Cattle, Sheep or Goats.

1. Select Paddocks (Paddock-level ONLY)

Tick the checkboxes next to the paddocks you want to include in your forage budget. Only selected paddocks will contribute to your 'whole-farm' feed budget calculation.

 

2. Populating the Data

• Blue columns = not editable/auto-calculated - fields populated with PastureKey Data.
• White columns = editable, require your livestock management preferences.

Start at the left of the table and work across each row.

3. Unusable Biomass (%)

Enter the percentage of feed that livestock will avoid due to it being inedible, such as:

• Weeds
• Dead/unpalatable material
• Ungrazable species

 

4. Minimum Residual Biomass (Kg DM/Ha)

This is the pasture level you aim to leave behind to:

• Maintain ground cover
• Prevent soil erosion
• Enable faster regrowth of Pasture
• Ensure livestock can continue to access feed

Input your required residual biomass amounts per paddock. This is measures in Kg/DM/Ha

5. Pasture Growth Rate (Kg DM/Ha/Day)

• Pre-filled using Cibo Labs satellite data from your PastureKey service.
• You can adjust this manually based on current paddock conditions or known pasture performance.

 

6. Livestock Class Selection

Select one livestock class per paddock from the dropdown list according to the calculator type and system you have choose.

• Cattle (AE): British, Crossbred, Tropical classes
• Mixed Grazing (DSE): Sheep, (Merinos, Meat sheep) Goats, Cattle

This selection will unlock carefully calculated intakes and production measures.

 

7. Liveweight & Production Level

Enter the average liveweight of stock in the paddock.

For the AE Paddock or Farm Calculators:

• Select and choose the Average Daily Growth rate (ADG) (0.0 - 1.0 kg/day) that best represents your system.
• Then for breeders, select: Choose Weaning % (60–90%) metrics.

For the DSE Paddock or Farm Calculators-

• Select Frame Size and Age (e.g., <1 year, 2 years) for sheep and Goats or for Cattle - choose the input the liveweight and the ADG rates for your livestock grazing in your selected paddocks.

Depending on which AE or DSE calculator you select to use, the layout of the calculator will look different as shown in the following examples.

Example of AE – Calculators for Farm or paddocks layout for liveweight and production level allocation.

Example of DSE – calculators for Farm and paddocks layouts for frame size and age for sheep, goat and liveweight and production level for cattle enterprises

 

8. Animal Numbers & Wastage

Enter the number of animals grazing.

Select a wastage percentage to account for:

• Trampling
• Fouling (dunging, urination)

Typical wastage: 20% | Wet/boggy: up to 45%

 

9. Grazing Days Auto-Calculated

Once inputs are complete, grazing days per farm or paddock are calculated automatically. These are based on current supply, pasture growth, intake, and wastage.

 

10. Paddock-level: Repeat Steps 1-9 for each grazed Paddock.

Work through each paddock currently being grazed. The tool updates your whole-farm summary as you go.

Why using the Forage Budget Calculator is a No-brainer!

Knowing how many available grazing days you have helps you:

• Plan ahead - scheduling your next livestock movements ahead of time
• Achieve sustainability goals - avoid overgrazing and bare paddocks
• Decrease costs of feed purchasing - Prevent critical feed shortages

Make proactive decisions before your biomass levels fall below sustainable limits and costly intervention is required. 

Other navigation tools:

There are three additional functions at the bottom of the calculators.

Load from Excel - Allows the user to load data for inputs of columns from a excel data set.

Save to Excel - Allows the user to save the calculator outputs to excel.

Reset table data - Resets the calculator.