The Ellinbank automatic pasture reader, in the process of being commercialised, bolts on to a quad bike and allows the farmer to simply drive over a paddock to get an accurate understanding of how much utilisable pasture is available.

Unlike the human eye, the pasture reader can be calibrated to only measure pasture above the livestock graze height—about five centimetres for cattle—so the producer only measures the availability of the pasture that can be eaten.

The device can also be used to measure the rate of regrowth in a previously-grazed paddock.

Inventor Ivor Awty, a senior technical officer with the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, decided to try to make life easier for himself when he was managing pasture utilisation for 10 different dairy research herds.

Mr Awty found that by accurately allocating grazing pressure to available pasture, he could lift pasture utilisation by up to 80 per cent.

In a previous career with the mining industry, Mr Awty had seen sonar used to measure the level of coal in dusty bunkers.

“I thought if we could use that technology on a vehicle, and run a moving sensor over a stationary subject, we’d have something to measure pasture so we could make better use of what was there,” he said.

The Ellinbank automatic pasture reader, nearly a decade in the making, sends about 10 sonar “pings” toward the ground each second.

The device analyses the echo profile to make an assessment of average pasture height, which provides an indication of pasture density. An algorithm converts this information to dry matter per hectare.

An on-bike display provides constant feedback to the producer about the status of the pasture he is traversing.

Accuracy is as good as or better than any other device out there, Mr Awty claims.

At $3800 per unit, plus GST, the pasture reader isn’t cheap.

But Mr Awty points out that if a dairy farmer grows 10 tonne of dry matter per hectare and uses the pasture reader to lift utilisation from 60-70 per cent to 70-80 per cent, he gains one tonne of feed per hectare.

On a 100 hectare, 220 cow dairy farm, that could save $20,000 a year in feed supplements.

Future versions are being designed with USB ports and Bluetooth, to allow producers to download information that can be synced with paddock mapping programs.

For more information contact Ivor Awty on (03) 5624 2254 or email