For James Tweedie, measuring grass has simply been part of the routine for years.
At South Dyke Farm in Cumbria, James and his team milk 360 spring-calving cows across 120ha, supplying Arla through a low-input grazing system where making the most from pasture is critical.
“We’re probably towards the lower-input end of the UK dairy spectrum, so grass is absolutely crucial to the whole system,” says James.
The farm has been plate metering consistently for more than a decade, carrying out weekly pasture walks to help guide grazing decisions and manage feed supply. “We’d be pretty religious every week,” he explains.
But while regular pasture measurement provided valuable data, it also created a challenge familiar to many grazing farmers – the time involved.
South Dyke Farm operates across a fragmented grazing platform with close to 50 paddocks to measure. “A full plate meter walk was probably a four- or five-hour job,” says James. “It was always one of those jobs I was less keen to give away to other people.”
Building confidence in the data
James began trialling AIMER alongside traditional plate metering, using smartphone pasture scanning to compare measurements across the farm.
One of the biggest reassurances came from seeing how closely the two systems aligned. “When we were doing both side-by-side, it was reassuring to see the plate-meter measurements and the app measurements coming back very close.”
For James, simplicity has also been a major advantage. “Scanning paddocks is really simple,” he explains. “That’s probably the key thing.”
Saving hours every week
Accuracy was important, but the real game changer is the time saving.
“With a fragmented farm like ours, measuring pasture takes time,” says James. “A full plate-meter walk was four or five hours, now it takes less than one hour, so the time saving with AIMER is huge.
“It’s simple to use, the measurements have stacked up well against the plate meter, and it has the potential to completely revolutionise pasture measurement on farms like ours.”
Key results from South Dyke Farm
· Weekly pasture measurement across around 50 paddocks now takes one hour
· Saving 3-4 hours per farm walk
· AIMER measurements closely matched plate meter results
· Faster and simpler pasture measurement using smartphone scanning
