Stick reading in, days of grazing out — with utilization and intake kept separate so the answer holds up.
How many grazing days is this pasture holding?
Formula and tables: Univ. of Kentucky Forage Extension, "Using a Grazing Stick" — days = (DM/acre × acres × utilization) ÷ (herd weight × intake %). DM per acre-inch by species/density from the same publication. Reviewed July 2026
Reading this the way a grazier would
The supply side is your standing forage: usable inches × pounds of dry matter per acre-inch (a grazing-stick number that depends on species and how dense the stand is — Kentucky's tables run 50–300 lb for fescue/orchardgrass and up to 400 for dense bermudagrass) × the utilization your system can actually harvest. The demand side is herd weight × daily intake. Divide, and you have days before the herd should move.
One number, not two: enter standing forage and let the utilization selector do the discounting. If you've already estimated "usable" forage some other way, set utilization thinking about what your input already includes — applying the discount twice cuts your answer roughly in half, and that error survives in a lot of homemade spreadsheets.
Leave residual: taking cool-season pastures below about 3–4 inches trades this rotation's extra days for the next month's regrowth. The "inches" input above is deliberately height above your residual target, not total height.
Worked example: 5 acres with 4 usable inches of average-density fescue (175 lb DM per acre-inch) is 700 lb of standing DM per acre. In a slow rotation at 47.5% utilization: 5 × 700 × 0.475 = 1,663 usable lb. A 24,000-lb herd at 3% intake needs 720 lb/day — so this pasture holds about 2.3 grazing days. Time to have the next paddock ready.