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.

Table of contents

1. What this mod does
2. Requirements & compatibility
3. One-time setup (once per save)
4. Setting up barns & pastures (the Map tab)
5. Recording walk paths
6. Moving the herd (the Grazing tab)
7. The daily cycle & the Herdsman
8. Herd schedule & production type
9. Pasture produce (milk, slurry, manure)
10. Pasture science — grass, soil, boost, renewal, Precision Farming
11. Settings reference
12. Troubleshooting

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.

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.

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%

1. 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.

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.

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).

1. The menu closes and a flashing "RECORDING" banner appears. Walk or drive the route all the way to the pasture.
2. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

11. Settings reference

All of these live on the Settings tab.

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).

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.