Setting up your livestock to reflect how you manage them on your farm is important for record keeping consistency.
There are four ways to run cattle on AgriWebb.
Mixed Age Class
Age Class
Pregnancy Status (Wet and Dry)
Sex
The way you set up your livestock to start with is not set in stone. Changing livestock’s details is simple and can match the timing of key events on-farm such scanning where you may wish to make changes to livestock configuration.
1: Mixed Age Livestock
When adding a mixed aged livestock group, select Cows as the age class from the drop down list. If you want to learn more about adding livestock, check out our Add Livestock guide.
Next, select an Ear Tag Colour option. For mixed age livestock select the Mixed tag option.
Livestock with a mixed ear tag is identified with an M on their icon
If you have existing livestock you would like to merge together into a mixed aged group, follow the steps outlined in our article Merge Livestock.
2: Age Class Livestock
If you manage your livestock according to ear tag colours and specific age groups, begin by choosing the age class of the livestock from the drop down list.
Livestock Age Classes will place restrictions on the ability to input certain records pertaining to livestock reproductive processes such as weaning, joining, scanning and marking. The capabilities of each age class are outlined below:
Calves (Heifer and Steer): Calves are recently born individuals and remain within this age class until they have been weaned from their mother. Whilst in this age class you are able to record the Weaning.
Heifer Weaners: These are individuals that have been weaned from their mothers and are still under 12 months of age. Within mob records, you will be able to record joining, marking and scanning for this age class.
Heifers: This age class is designated for females that over 12 months of age and yet to have their first calf. Again, you are able to record joining, marking and scanning within this age class.
Cows: These are females that have previously had a calf, they are eligible for joining, marking and scanning records to be input.
Next, select an Ear Tag Colour that corresponds to the year they were born. In AgriWebb we use the 8 year MLA tagging system as a guide only. If you use a different system on farm, feel free to select any colour you wish. The year won’t have any impact on the livestock information.
For cattle, you can choose any colour you wish for your livestock.
As you move livestock around the paddocks you will see livestock of different tag colours identified by their icon with a coloured dot indicating different age groups within that paddock.
3: Pregnancy Status (Wet & Dry)
Feed requirements of each of these groups vary, just as your management practices do. As a result, it may be important to you to be able to identify livestock by their pregnancy status.
You’re able to set up your cows to indicate their pregnancy status using the tips below.
Whether livestock is assigned mixed tag or coloured tags, apply a Scanning Record to the whole group in order to accurately record the results including their scanning percentage.
Following this, you can Draft and Split the livestock according to the results.
Once you have moved the livestock into their target paddocks you can create an Add Tag record and add a Management Tag according to their pregnancy status.
Type in Wet or Dry into the Management Tag field and click Save.
This Management tag can be used to filter through records and reports to quickly obtain total numbers of each group and where they are on the farm.
4: Bulls
Common practice for larger bull groups is to set them up as one mixed aged group, with a mixed ear tag for the majority of the year. Once you reach joining time, you can Draft and Split as you put them out with the cows. At this time you can utilise the Management Tag field to include their ear tag number to identify them individually.
If you have a small number of bulls, feel free to set them up as individuals, specifying the number of head as 1 and using their individual tag number as either their Name or Management Tag.
Cattle FAQs
Bred or Purchased?
When adding livestock you will be prompted to select if the livestock has been bred or purchased. If they has been purchased, ensure that you fill out the relevant details as once the livestock is created, you will not be able to change the livestock's origin from bred to purchased.
Purchase records from across all of your livestock can be viewed from the Purchase Records report.
Calves
The best way to get your calves into AgriWebb is to use the Marking record found under maternal livestock’s record options. This will create the new group of calves for you and will link them to their maternal group. Additionally, this prompts the marking percentage to populate in your Fertility Report.
Your calves can then be managed in the same way as other livestock in AgriWebb.
Merge Livestock
Merging livestock means combining multiple groups of the same type into a single group. Merging is possible when the Age Class, Breed, Tag Colour and Management Tags are the same.
Merging is not automatic because when livestock are merged together, the records of both groups are also combined. Follow this guide to learn how to Merge Livestock.
More Helpful Links
Learn more about Cattle records from the following articles!