Pasture PathChecked against the program pages below in October 2026. Programs open, close and change their rules — read the current guidelines and talk to the people who run the program before you spend money. Pasture Path has no connection with any funding program and cannot tell you whether an application will be approved.
Why the map matters
Under the On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF), the federal program that cost-shares practices including rotational grazing, the organizations that deliver the money ask for a plan you can look at. The Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, which delivers the rotational grazing stream in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan, says: "All applications must have an accompanying rotational grazing plan." In Alberta, RDAR, which administers OFCAF for the province's producers, requires an action plan that "must include labelled maps of project field boundaries on air photos or images."
Other programs, and lenders and landlords for that matter, ask for much the same. A good map answers the reviewer's questions before they are asked: where is this, what is there now, what will be built, and how much of it.
What a grazing plan map should show
- The land. The outer boundary of what you graze, on an air photo, with its legal land description.
- Paddocks as they are now, each named or numbered, with its acres.
- Paddocks as they will be: the new cross-fences, with the length of each. That length is your fencing quote.
- Water. Existing sources, and each new trough or remote waterer, with the length of any pipeline to it.
- Gates and lanes: how animals get from one paddock to the next and to water.
- What you are protecting: creeks, sloughs and riparian strips that will be fenced out or grazed differently.
- Labels, a scale and a date, so the map can be read by someone who has never seen your place.
Drawing it in Pasture Path
- Find your land on the farm map by place name or coordinates and draw each existing paddock by tapping its corners. Its acres appear as you draw.
- Add the legal land description to each field so it prints with your records.
- Draw the proposed paddocks. Split a big field by drawing the new ones inside it; adjust the corners until the acres come out the way your plan needs.
- Draw the new fence lines and water lines as lines. Each shows its length in metres and feet.
- Mark every water point, existing and planned, and the gates.
- Take it with you. Download the map as a KML file to open and print from Google Earth, or capture the screen with the paddock labels showing.
The numbers that go with the map
A plan is the map plus the reasoning. The arithmetic most plans need:
- How many paddocks, and how big — from the rest you want each to get and the herd you are feeding. The paddock calculator does this.
- Whether the land can carry the herd for the season. The stocking rate calculator works it out in AUMs.
- Where you are starting from. If you record this year's moves in Pasture Path, you will have days grazed, days rested and animal-days per acre for every paddock — the "before" that makes the "after" believable.
Who to talk to
A mentor or agrologist who knows your area will improve a plan more than any software. Some programs help pay for exactly that. Start with the organization delivering the program in your province; their pages say who is eligible, what is covered and when applications open.