How to use HerdsGrow

 As a Farm Owner or Herd Manager, you will have access to the Cattle table as well as tables for Cows, Bulls, and Calves. The cattle table gives you an overview of all your cattle and allows you to add a lot more information per animal that you would not want everyone to access, such as purchase dates and prices.

The separate Cow, Calves and Bulls tables will be used by farm workers to narrow their focus to the minimum amount of information per animal.

Production: running of the farm

3.1 Breeding Record

Production & Growth\Breeding Record

You many want your staff to capture a date when a bull serves a cow. Once captured, you will quickly see which of your bulls are the better performers. In a multi-sire operation this may or may not be required, but the system gives you the flexibility.

3.2 Growth

Production & Growth\Growth

The farmer must measure cattle at regular intervals. This can be captured in the growth table. Typically, the animals that have the best weight to height ratio will be the animals that are converting grass to beef the most effectively. Now combine that with productivity information and very soon you will see your best animals.

3.3 Milk Production

Production & Growth\Milk production

If you receive income from milk, capture the milk production. Capture date, cow and litres of milk. This will give you a trend of the period of time she produces a certain amount of milk.

3.4 Paddock Condition

Tracking of a paddock. We provide a guide and each farmer can amend this to suit their needs. This links to a report logging condition, treatment and how condition changes + photos.

3.5 Cow Condition

Tracking of health of animals. We provide a guide and each farmer can amend this to suit their needs. This links to a report logging condition, treatment and how condition changes + photos.

3.6 Bull Condition

Tracking of health of animals. We provide a guide and each farmer can amend this to suit their needs. This links to a report logging condition, treatment and how condition changes + photos.

3.5 Herd Per Paddock

Over time a herd will move between paddocks. This table allows a herd to be captured against a paddock and the date it moved into the paddock. When you move a herd to a new paddock the previous paddock end date will be set to the start date of the new paddock.

Sales

4.1 Shipment

Sales\Shipment

When selling cattle, you will load them in a truck. This is a shipment, and you want to capture information of what livestock was loaded to ensure that that is the same animals that gets sold at the auction.

A shipment report to can be printed and given to the driver. The report will act as a permit for the driver to ship the animals. An attached schedule of the treatments given will show the buyer what vaccines (if any) the animals have had.

4.2 Sales invoice

Sales\Sales Invoice

Use this screen to capture the sale per tag number. These cattle will then move to archive on the system and the sales price and cost of sales will be used in the farm reports.

The reason for the information being captured is to determine a Return on Investment per area. If you know what the animals cost you to produce your weights, then you will know whether you are improving or not.

Reports

Bulls:

Ave Age (by #/group totals), in the Total Breeding Herd. Ave Purchase &/Maintenance Cost, Ave Bull costs/calf

Objective is to provide a list of bulls per paddock with basic information.

Cows:  

Cow Productivity Report. Fields:  Tag #; First calver; Preg Y/N; Paddock, Comments, 

Age (in months) at 1st and 2nd Calving. Milk:Body Mass: Hip Height Ratio.

Objective is to provide a list of cows/paddock and identify those that are most productive.

Milk Production in relation to frame size:  Fields: Hip Height, Mass & Age must be Adjusted for ????

Calves:

Calf Report. Basic list of calves. Fields: Tag#, sex, birth date, wean date, Dam, Weight at wean as a % of dam weight, comments. 

Objective is to see the list of calves and manage weaning.

Vet Treatments:

Tag#, Treatment given, Comment. 

Objective is to see the treatments given/ herd/ paddock for traceability.

Paddocks and Farm:

1.1.1      Paddock productivity report

Fields Paddock name, LSU's carried per paddock over a period of time. Objective is to see whether the paddocks are improving in carrying capacity over time. One cow = 1LSU, so if a paddock carried 100 cows and 50 calves it would have carried 150LSU/day. One will have a date entry to the paddock and a date left the paddock. See below for formal definition of stocking density/rate from literature.

1.1.2      Farm Cost Report

Fields: Farm name, Variable and fixed costs. Objective is to see the costs per farm, derived from the feed, vet and fixed costs tables. How many kg of beef has the farm produced in 12 months?

Definitions

Stocking density

Stocking density is the number of animals on a particular piece of land at a particular point in time. For example, a herd of 30 cows on a 20-acre rotational grazing paddock has a stocking density of 1.5 animal units per acre, even though the stocking rate for the 160 acre pasture remains at 0.75 LSU/ acre.

Other comments.

Allow Multiple tag nr under Vet Treatments to select multiple individual cattle.

Cow Condition

Tracking of health of animals. We provide a guide and each farmer can amend this to suit their needs. Report logging condition, treatment and how condition changes + photos

Reports

These are the reports that you will use to manage your farm. Please refer to the Reports table for a list of all reports.

Give LSU breakdown

Macro on calves table to change calf to cow

system calculates the the wean date based on the 205 day setup in the farm table

·       Clves report sorted by herd then Wight to Hip Height

Notes:

We are trying to measure two things for productivity - so it's simplified.

·      For bull calves, we want to measure the hip height and weight of the yearling bulls only - not the heifers

·      For the heifers we want to know how many months from birth before she calves. In other words if a heifer is pregnant at 18 months and calves at 26 months we want to capture that.

Sex and category:

Indicate the sex of the animal as male and female.

Male

At Birth a male fall in the category Male Calf.

When the animal is weaned the category changes to MALE WEANER

Most castrations happen at Weaning, when a Male Calf gets Castrated the category changes to a WEANER STEER.

If it does NOT get Castrated the Category remains as MALE WEANER

Only at one year of age the animal becomes either a YEARLING STEER or a MALE YEARLING

If you start breeding it ONLY the MALE YEARLINGS can become YEARLING BULLS

N.B. an INTACT MALE can become a STEER at any Age if it is Castrated.

At 2 Yrs of Age these two Categories become simply known as either STEERS or BULLS

Female

On birth a female is in the category FEMALE CALF

After weaning she falls in the category WEANER HEIFER

At 1 Yr Old she becomes a YEARLING HEIFER

After 2 Yrs Old she becomes known as just a HEIFER 

until she gives Birth, then she becomes a COW.

Sold ???