Abstract
Quantifying botanical composition is important for evaluating management effect on legume content and legume content on pasture yield and quality. The standard for measuring botanical composition is hand separation of clipped samples. An alternative is taking point counts of botanical components on photographs of the pasture. This was tested on a rotationally stocked pasture, taking photos at 24 random sample areas, clipping areas at ground level and hand separating samples into grass, legume and forb fractions. Photos were evaluated using a grid in Microsoft PowerPoint. Point counts were calibrated to hand separated values using linear regression. Grass and legume point count components were not significantly different from hand separated values (P=0.05) but underestimated the forb fraction. Calibration regressions had R 2 values ranging from 0.45 to 0.98. Precision of this technique is dependent on the number of photos/pasture, number of points counted/photo and the number of paired samples taken for calibration. In cool-season grass-clover pastures 12 or more photos/pasture and 100 or more points/photo are a good balance between photo number and points per photo. For calibration 12 or more paired samples should be used. Photo point counts appear to be a practical method of measuring grass, legume and forb components in rotationally grazed pastures.
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