By James Camody – MaiaGrazing Product Manager
We are thrilled to announce the upcoming release of an exciting new MaiaGrazing feature: the integration of photo capture to enhance pasture observations! This feature will enhance grazing management for our livestock producers by adding important visual context to their observations.
Since launching the new MaiaGrazing Plus app earlier this year, our Engineering resources have been dedicated to rebuilding the Livestock Operations functionality within MaiaGrazing, laying the groundwork to bring Livestock Operations to the new mobile app.
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Unlocking the Power of Pasture Observations
The launch of this feature and the continued development of features related to Livestock Operations is a direct response to the evolving needs of graziers seeking ways to align on-the-ground observations with farm data.
Our new ‘Pasture Observations’ feature empowers better management decisions by allowing graziers to observe the land alongside their feed budget in MaiaGrazing. Pasture observations can improve feed budget estimations through providing a more accurate representation of available feed.
We hope that by providing an avenue for more impartial farm data, we can help graziers avoid misjudging pasture condition and assuming there’s ample feed for the season when pastures appear lush and green.
How to attach a photo to a Pasture Observation
Whenever you take a new Pasture Observation on the MaiaGrazing Plus mobile app, either from the Paddock Details or the Map, you’ll be able to attach a photo from your phone’s gallery, or take a fresh photo on the spot.
You can attach up to 5 photos to the Pasture Observation, each with a caption.
View Pasture Observations and available photos
When you’re looking at the details of any paddock on your farm, you’ll be able to see the last Pasture Observation recorded, and any photos that you or your colleagues have taken!
How can Photo Capture help me run my grazing operation?
We all know a picture tells a thousand words! Let’s delve into the many ways that graziers can incorporate photos into their daily operations with MaiaGrazing:
- Access rich context for making well-informed decisions:
Having easy access to visual cues of the condition, quality and quantity of your pasture is crucial when working through the key grazing decisions that MaiaGrazing helps you with. Photo capture can provide context for questions like, “Do I have enough feed to make it through the upcoming season?”, or “Where should I move that large mob next?”
- Calibrate your Pasture Observations.
Being able to see photos of past estimates taken in your paddocks really helps take the guesswork and worry out of feed estimates. It also helps to ensure that you’re able to effectively plan & forecast for the season ahead, particularly in dry times. Photo observations can help you recall what 20 SDH, 150 DDH or 1500 kg dm/Ha looked like last time you were in a similar paddock. This will be an important way to accurately estimate whether you’re looking at more or less feed in a new observation. You can take more photos to keep building those estimation skills!
- Facilitate better team communication via MaiaGrazing :
Photos taken by one MaiaGrazing user seamlessly synchronise across all users in the team when they’re online. This feature streamlines communication within your MaiaGrazing team, allowing you to convey exactly what you’re observing while on the move.
The next evolution from here
This is the first, exciting step for us in introducing photo capture to a specific workflow within our product, and we welcome your feedback to guide us as we continue to improve. Some of the great ideas we’ve considering for our future product roadmap include:
- Displaying photos taken on Pasture Observations on the desktop MaiaGrazing web app
- Enhancing the Graze Plan and Paddock Inventory workflows with photos captured
- Enhancing the Map and Paddock List to show which paddocks have photos captured
- Displaying the specific points where photos have been taken within a paddock on the Map
Do you think these features will enhance your experience of using MaiaGrazing? Please let us know by contacting our product team at feedback@maiagrazing.com. We hope you are just as excited as we are to start using our Photo Capture feature!
