# Pasture Grazing System — User Guide

A friendly, complete guide to setting up and running realistic cattle grazing in Farming Simulator 25.

> Open the mod menu at any time with **Ctrl + P**.

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## Table of contents

1. [What this mod does](#1-what-this-mod-does)
2. [Requirements & compatibility](#2-requirements--compatibility)
3. [One-time setup (once per save)](#3-one-time-setup-once-per-save)
4. [Setting up barns & pastures (the Map tab)](#4-setting-up-barns--pastures-the-map-tab)
5. [Recording walk paths](#5-recording-walk-paths)
6. [Moving the herd (the Grazing tab)](#6-moving-the-herd-the-grazing-tab)
7. [The daily cycle & the Herdsman](#7-the-daily-cycle--the-herdsman)
8. [Herd schedule & production type](#8-herd-schedule--production-type)
9. [Pasture produce (milk, slurry, manure)](#9-pasture-produce-milk-slurry-manure)
10. [Pasture science — grass, soil, boost, renewal, Precision Farming](#10-pasture-science--grass-soil-boost-renewal-precision-farming)
11. [Settings reference](#11-settings-reference)
12. [Troubleshooting](#12-troubleshooting)

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## 1. What this mod does

Pasture Grazing System adds a realistic **grazing loop** on top of Realistic Livestock RM (RLRM).

Your animals walk out to pastures you define and graze — on a **daily cycle**, **full-time**, or kept **housed**, your choice per barn. Pastures deplete as they're grazed and regrow gradually — nothing snaps back overnight. On top of that: **soil quality** that overgrazing and wet weather wear down and rest/fertilizer/renewal restore, a **grazing boost** (graze well and your beef weigh more, your dairy give more milk), optional **Precision Farming soil** with **pH & liming**, rotation between paddocks, animal health, and the milk/slurry/manure your herd produces — all modelled realistically.

If you'd rather not micromanage, an optional **Herdsman** can run the whole daily routine for you in exchange for a wage.

The mod ships its **own pasture placeable** — "Cow Barn Small", found in the **Fences** category of the shop — so you don't need any other pasture mod. External fenceless-pasture mods work too.

Everything you need is in the in-game menu. Open it with **Ctrl + P**. It has five tabs: **Grazing**, **Map**, **Settings**, **Notifications**, and **Information**.

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## 2. Requirements & compatibility

### Required

- **Realistic Livestock RM** (`FS25_RealisticLivestockRM`) — the mod builds on top of it. Without it, most features are inactive.
- **Animal Herding Lite** (`FS25_AnimalHerdingLite`) — gives you properly animated walking cows during moves. Download it here:
  **https://github.com/ConGan98/FS25_AnimalHerdingLite/releases**

Install both before you start.

### Works nicely with

- **Precision Farming DLC** — cooperates with its sprayer effects, **and** adds an optional soil layer: each pasture's starting soil quality comes from the map's real soil type, and soil **pH** affects grass growth (fix it by driving a **lime spreader** over the pasture). Toggle the whole layer on/off in Settings; nothing changes if you don't run PF. See section 10.
- **British Fill Units** — menu fill readouts switch to mass units when it's active, litres otherwise.
- **Red Tape** — if installed, the mod sets its *animal productivity recovery* to **Instant** so a moved herd doesn't dip; without it, the same instant recovery is applied to registered barns.

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## 3. One-time setup (once per save)

Do these four things once when you start a save. They make sure the day-based mechanics have enough to work with and that grass amounts match your herd.

1. **Set your Period length to at least 3 days per month.** Find this in the base game's **Settings → General**. The mod's day-based mechanics (regrowth, soil quality, produce) need enough day ticks to work properly.
2. **Set your food-consumption multiplier in RLRM's menu** (for example, 2x). The mod scales pasture grass to match whatever you choose here.
3. **Set "Roughage from grass" in this mod's Settings tab** to match your herd:
   - Dairy: about **55–60%**
   - Mixed: about **65–70%**
   - Beef: about **80–90%**
4. **Save the game.** RLRM writes its settings to disk when you save, and this mod reads them from there — so a save locks it all in.

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## 4. Setting up barns & pastures (the Map tab)

All of your **setup** happens on the **Map tab**. It's visual and click-based.

The Map tab shows the in-game map with an icon on every cow barn and pasture:

- **Barns are tinted blue.**
- **Pastures are tinted green.**
- Each icon has its name shown underneath.

**Click an icon** to open a popup of actions. What you see depends on what you clicked:

- **On an unregistered husbandry:** *Register as Barn* or *Register as Pasture*.
- **On a barn:** *Rename*, *Remove Barn*.
- **On a pasture** (owned by the barn you have selected): *Set as Active Pasture*, *Record Walk Path*, *Clear Path*, *Clear Pasture-to-Pasture Path*, *Rename*, *Remove Pasture*.
- **On a pasture registered to a different barn:** *Also Register to \<barn\>* — this **shares** the pasture with a second barn.

> **Renaming is global.** The name you set here also shows up in RLRM and in the base game's animal and map menus.

### Typical setup flow

1. **Register a barn.** Click its icon, choose *Register as Barn*.
2. **Register one or more pastures.** Click each pasture icon and choose *Register as Pasture*. Up to about **4 pastures per barn** is a good number to aim for.
3. *(Optional but recommended)* **Record a walk path** for each pasture so your cows follow a real route instead of walking a straight line. See the next section.

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## 5. Recording walk paths

A walk path is the route your cows follow between two points. Without one, they simply take a direct line. Recording one makes moves look natural and lets you route the herd along roads, through gates, and around obstacles.

### To record a path

1. On the pasture's popup, choose **Record Walk Path**.
2. **Pick the start point:**
   - The **barn** — for a normal barn-to-pasture route.
   - Another **pasture** — for a pasture-to-pasture route (used when you move the herd from one paddock directly to another).
3. The menu closes and a flashing **"RECORDING"** banner appears. **Walk or drive the route** all the way to the pasture.
4. **Re-open the menu** (it jumps straight back to the Map tab with that pasture's popup) and choose **Finish**.

### Clearing paths

- **Clear Path** removes a barn-to-pasture path.
- **Clear Pasture-to-Pasture Path** opens a picker so you can remove one specific route, or all of them.

### Tips

- The **path sample distance** (how often a point is recorded along your route) is set on the **Settings** tab.
- Turn on **Draw walk paths** in Settings to see your paths on the ground:
  - **Barn-to-pasture routes are warm colours** (one colour per barn).
  - **Pasture-to-pasture routes are cool colours.**
  This lets you tell at a glance which barn a path belongs to and what kind it is.

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## 6. Moving the herd (the Grazing tab)

The Map tab is for **setup**. All **herd movement** happens on the **Grazing tab**.

- **Send Out / Bring In** — the big toggle button. It sends the herd out to its active pasture, or brings it home.
- **Move herd here** — when the herd is already out, select another pasture and press this to walk them from one pasture to another. This uses a recorded pasture-to-pasture path if you have one; otherwise it moves them directly.

### The walk queue

Only **one herd walks at a time** across all your barns. If you send a second herd while another is still walking:

- It gets **queued** — the button greys to **"Queued…"**.
- It starts **automatically** the moment the first walk finishes.
- You'll get a **"walk queued"** notice so you know what happened.

### Gates

Gates on the path **open automatically** at the start of the walk and **close** again once the herd is through. You don't need to do anything.

This works for **most** gates — vanilla gates and many popular gate/fence mods — but **not every** gate. Some custom gates are built in a way the mod can't operate. If a gate on your route stays shut, either route the path around it or leave that gate open.

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## 7. The daily cycle & the Herdsman

### The daily cycle

- **At sunrise**, herds go out to their active pasture.
- **At sunset**, they come home.

The sunrise and sunset hours are set on the **Settings** tab, and you can set **per-barn overrides** on the Grazing tab.

There's also a **grazing season** (Settings). By default it runs **March to October**. Outside the season, cows stay in for a winter pause and won't auto-go-out — though you can still send them out by hand on any day.

### The Herdsman (automation)

The **Herdsman** is the per-barn **auto-grazing toggle** on the Grazing tab. It decides whether the daily routine runs by itself:

- **ON** — the Herdsman runs the daily cycle for you (out at sunrise, home at sunset, respecting the season).
- **OFF (Manual)** — you control every send-out and bring-in yourself. Nothing moves on its own.

### Auto Pasture Select

This is a **separate per-barn toggle** (default **OFF**). It lets the Herdsman pick and rotate pastures based on grass:

- **ON** — when the active pasture's grass drops below the **Rotate threshold** (default **30%**), the Herdsman walks the herd to a fresher pasture. If both the grass and the feed trough run very low, it does an emergency move.
- **OFF** — the Herdsman never changes pastures on its own; it only sends the herd out and brings it back in.

### Shared-pasture safety

The Herdsman will **never** move a herd onto a pasture that already holds another barn's herd. If there's no free pasture with grass available, it moves nothing and lets you know.

### The Herdsman's wage

While **any** barn has the Herdsman turned on, a wage is charged monthly. It's set on the Settings tab (default about **$14/hr**), and you can set it to **Free**.

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## 8. Herd schedule & production type

Each barn has a **schedule** — *where the herd lives* — set on the Grazing tab. It's animal-neutral, so it works for cows, sheep, goats, anything:

- **Day grazing** — out at sunrise, home at sunset. Best for herds you handle daily (e.g. milking).
- **Full-time grazing** — the herd lives out on pasture continuously (the season and weather gates still apply).
- **Housed** — the herd stays in the barn/shed on TMR.

A quick **House herd / Out to pasture** button on the bottom bar flips between Full-time grazing and Housed.

**Production type is automatic and separate.** The mod detects whether the animal produces milk and shows it as **"Produces: milk / meat"** on the barn line. This — not the schedule — drives the productivity floor, the feed-trough default, and which grazing boost applies:

- **Milk herds** get a full-milk productivity floor and the milk boost; trough **off** by default.
- **Meat herds** get the grass floor (rising as you hand-feed concentrate) and the weight boost; trough **on** by default.

Because the two are decoupled, a **dairy herd grazed full-time still gives full milk** — you're never forced to trade one for the other.

> **Important — the schedule is advisory in Manual mode.** It tells the **Herdsman** what you want; it does **not** move animals by itself.
>
> - **Herdsman ON:** switching to Day / Full-time grazing sends them out; Housed brings them in.
> - **Herdsman OFF (Manual):** switching the schedule moves **nothing**. You send them out or bring them in yourself with **Send Out / Bring In**. The schedule is just a label of your intent — it never changes on its own from your moves or from reloading a save.

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## 9. Pasture produce (milk, slurry, manure)

While your herd is grazing, the pasture accumulates **milk, slurry, and manure**. These **drain back to the home barn's storage automatically**, so you don't have to drive out to each pasture to collect them.

> **Known quirk:** while the cows are **out**, the barn's own milk panel may read empty. Don't worry — the milk storage **is** still filling. Check the storage total, not the live panel.

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## 10. Pasture science — grass, soil, boost, renewal, Precision Farming

The mod models pastures realistically. Here's what's going on, in plain terms.

### Grass regrowth

Instead of refilling to full overnight (the base-game behaviour), grass regrows **gradually, per hour**. You set the daily budget on the Settings tab (default **40% per day**). An **empty pasture with no cows never loses grass** — it only ever recovers.

### Soil quality (0–100%)

Soil quality **drops while a pasture is grazed** and **recovers while it rests**. It scales both how fast grass grows back and how strongly the Herdsman prefers that pasture — so run-down paddocks get de-prioritised until they recover.

Two things make it drop *faster* than normal:

- **Overgrazing** — grazing a pasture that's already low on grass (below ~15%) hammers the soil harder the closer it gets to bare dirt. Rotate before you strip a paddock.
- **Wet-weather poaching** — grazing on wet/soft ground (rain or snow) cuts up the soil more. Housing the herd in the wet protects it.

Without Precision Farming, every pasture starts at 100%. **With Precision Farming** the starting quality comes from the map's real soil type — see *Precision Farming soil* below.

### Roughage from grass

This Settings value sets how much of a cow's diet comes from grass. It drives how fast pastures drain and the "grass lasts X hours / Y days" readouts you see in the menu. Match it to your herd (dairy lower, beef higher).

### Water

Each pasture has a water setting, adjustable per pasture on the Grazing tab. With **auto-supply on**, the trough is effectively **unlimited** and shows full — no hauling needed.

### Pasture capacity

You can set a per-pasture **animal capacity** on the Grazing tab to control stocking.

### Feed trough (pasture)

An **optional** hand-fed supplement trough at the pasture. By default it's **on for meat herds, off for milk herds** (flip it either way per barn). Any leftover feed returns to the barn when the animals leave, so nothing's wasted.

### Grazing productivity

- **Milk herds are floored to 100%** — full output straight from grass.
- **Meat herds are floored to about 80%**, rising toward 100% as you hand-feed the pasture trough with concentrate/TMR.

### Fertilizer, slurry & lime

Spreading fertilizer or slurry over a pasture gives it a **temporary boost** to regrowth and recovery. A Settings overlay can show you which parts of the pasture still need covering as you spread. **Lime** is handled too, but for soil pH — see *Precision Farming soil* below.

### Grazing boost — weight & milk

Animals that graze **often on good-quality grass** perform better. Each herd builds up a **grazing condition** (0–100%, shown on the Grazing tab's barn line): it climbs while they're out on good grass — up to that pasture's quality — and fades while they're housed. Nothing snaps; house a herd and it eases back over a few in-game days.

- **Beef** hold a higher weight, so they **sell for more** (finish them on grass, sell while they're still heavy).
- **Milk herds** give **more milk**.

Not every animal responds the same — it varies per animal (their genetics), so a herd finishes at a spread of weights and yields. Overgrazing and poor pH lower grass quality, which lowers the boost — another reason to look after your pastures. Tune the boost sizes and ramp speed in Settings.

### Pasture renewal (reseeding)

A worn-out paddock recovers slowly on its own. **Renewal** is the fast, paid alternative. On the Grazing tab, select a pasture and press **Renew pasture**, then confirm the cost (it scales with the pasture's size).

The pasture is renovated back to full quality, the grass is sown fresh (so it starts bare), and grazing is **locked out for about 2 in-game months** while the new sward establishes. While locked it shows **REGROWTH** in the list (greyed out — can't be set active or grazed, and the Herdsman won't rotate onto it) with the days remaining. You get a notification when it reopens. You can't renew a pasture while the herd is on it — bring them in first.

### Precision Farming soil (pH & lime)

*Optional — needs the Precision Farming DLC. Toggle it in Settings; without PF, every pasture just starts at 100% and there's no pH.*

- **Starting soil quality** comes from the map's soil type at each pasture — poor ground starts lower, premium ground high — with a little per-location variation, so some pastures start good, some middling, some need work. A save made before this feature **backfills automatically** on load; no need to remove and re-add pastures.
- **Soil pH** is compared to the optimal pH for that soil type; the further off, the slower the grass grows. When pH is dragging growth, the Grazing tab shows **"Soil pH: grass −N% (lime to improve)"**.
- **Liming:** PF only limes cultivated fields, not pastures — so the mod detects it itself. Just **drive a lime spreader over the pasture**: a white lime dusting appears and the pH corrects toward optimal (about 25 seconds of active liming = fully corrected, with a *"Pasture limed"* notification). The dusting fades on the next graze or after 2 days; the pH correction stays.

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## 11. Settings reference

All of these live on the **Settings** tab.

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Sunrise / sunset hours** | The times herds go out and come home each day (per-barn overrides on the Grazing tab). |
| **Grazing season start / end** | The months cows auto-go-out (default March–October). Outside it, they stay in. |
| **Min rest days** | The minimum number of days a pasture rests before it's grazed again. |
| **Weather gate** | Holds the herd in during bad weather. |
| **Auto-open gates** | Whether gates on the walk path open automatically — for every walk, only the Herdsman's walks, or never. |
| **Meadow regrowth (%/day)** | How much grass regrows per day (default 40%). |
| **Rotate threshold (%)** | Grass level at which the Herdsman rotates to a fresher pasture (default 30%). Needs Auto Pasture Select on. |
| **Soil quality decay / recovery (%/day)** | How fast soil quality drops while grazed and recovers while rested. |
| **Roughage from grass (%)** | How much of an animal's diet comes from grass. Drives drain rate and the menu readouts. |
| **Starvation thresholds (grass / supplement)** | The grass % and trough % below which a herd counts as "out of food" — the Herdsman then moves them to fresh grass (or warns you). |
| **Precision Farming soil** | On/off for the optional PF soil layer (starting quality from soil type + the pH modifier). Only matters if you run the PF DLC. |
| **Beef weight boost / Dairy milk boost** | How much extra weight / milk a herd earns at full grazing condition (or Off to disable). |
| **Condition ramp speed** | How fast the grazing condition builds and fades (Slow / Normal / Fast). |
| **Herdsman wage** | Monthly cost while any Herdsman is on (default ~$14/hr; can be set to Free). |
| **Path sample distance** | How often a point is recorded while you're capturing a walk path. |
| **Draw fence contours** *(debug)* | Draws pasture boundaries on the ground. |
| **Draw walk paths** *(debug)* | Shows recorded paths on the ground (warm = barn-to-pasture, cool = pasture-to-pasture). |
| **Show spray coverage** *(debug)* | Highlights which parts of a pasture still need fertilizer as you spread. |
| **Verbose / Debug log output** *(debug)* | OFF by default. Turn on only when diagnosing a problem — it makes the log very detailed. |

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## 12. Troubleshooting

**Cows won't auto-go-out.**
Turn the **Herdsman (auto-grazing) toggle ON** for that barn, and check you're inside the grazing season.

**The Herdsman won't rotate pastures when grass is low.**
Turn **Auto Pasture Select ON**, and make sure there's another registered pasture that has grass and no other herd on it.

**The schedule picker isn't moving the herd.**
That's intended in Manual mode. Either send them out / bring them in yourself, or turn the Herdsman on so the schedule drives the move.

**The barn's milk panel is empty while cows are out.**
Expected — the milk is still going into storage. Check the storage total.

**My pastures all start at 100% soil quality (no variation).**
The varied starting quality needs the **Precision Farming DLC** and the **Precision Farming soil** setting turned on (Settings tab). Without PF, every pasture starts at 100% by design.

**I limed my pasture but the pH didn't change.**
Precision Farming only limes cultivated fields, not pastures — so **drive the lime spreader over the pasture itself** and the mod picks it up (you'll see a lime dusting and a "Pasture limed" notification). If it's already fully limed, there's nothing left to correct.

**The log looks noisy.**
Turn **Verbose / Debug log output OFF** in Settings (it's off by default).

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### A few nice touches

- **Young calves** (under 6 months) play a run animation so they keep up with the herd instead of sliding along.
- **Console commands** exist for advanced users, but you don't need them — all everyday setup and control is in the menu.
- **Saving or exiting while cows are out is safe.** On reload, the mod puts each herd back where it was. In Manual mode it leaves them exactly where you left them.
