Livestock - General Overview

agCOMMANDER's livestock database allows you to keep accurate control of stock numbers, stock movements, paddock stocking rate histories, production histories and costs.With its unique system of mob codes, agCOMMANDER can manage up to nine different livestock categories simultaneously. 

“IAR” is an optional extra module available for the livestock section of agCOMMANDER. It provides a vehicle for recording Livestock activities of an Individual Animal, and the traits and development of those animals.agCOMMANDER IAR production recording is integrated into the mob-based Livestock recording system. All individual animal activities remain consistent with the standard agCOMMANDER Livestock system.

Individual Animal Records

Some of the Features of IAR include:

• Mobs can be nominated as having individually identified animals (or not)… You can have a mix mobs, partly identified animals and partly unidentified.
• Animals can be defined as “Off Farm” – and they don’t belong to any agCOMMANDER mob. These animals are typically the sires used in AI programs and the dead or absent ancestors of the current list of animals.
• Importing of Electronic ID tag identification files
• Importing of custom comma delimited text files to establish a list of animals or to add trait or weight data to a list of animals.
• When setting up mobs of identified animals, you can select a set of traits from your trait list, enter default values for them and apply those traits and values to all animals.
• Recording of Single Animal Treatments, Movements, Animal Traits, Weights and BreedPlan records.
• Trait information for an animal can be highly customised and multiple Traits can be grouped into Tasks for easier data entry.
• You can design your own unlimited list of traits. Trait types include: Text, Number, and Date, Yes/No etc… You can even set up your own Pick List system.
• Formulas for calculating custom user information using traits can also be used.
• Monitoring of matings (Natural, AI, IVF, and ET) and pregnancy tests for Dams and Sires.
• Progeny for an animal can be traced, displayed and printed.
• Bloodline Family Tree.
• On screen reporting enables you to quickly find an individual and see its movements, treatments, progeny etc.
• Finding an individual when needed is fast … a special filter system enables you to close in the animal quickly. The filter system also remembers its settings for next time to save time.

The IAR system is covered in it's won article. For now we will focus on the standard mob-based agCOMMANDER Livestock system.

Stock Classes and the Stock Class code

A stock class is a group of animals, which is distinguished in some way from all other stock classes on the farm. A agCOMMANDER stock class (mob code) can be spread over many paddocks. Some agCOMMANDER users set up agCOMMANDER in a very simple way by having only one stock class. This might apply to you if you only run bought-in merino whethers. The entire flock could be described as one mob code or stock class.

The mob code is made up of the factors:

SEX - YEAR BORN - TAG COLOUR – CATEGORY/SUBCATEGORY

agCOMMANDER uses "general" terms for the mob's sex: male, female, mixed and neutered (castrated males).

The sex code consists of a single letter,

F - females

M - males

N - castrated males

X - mixed sex mob

This way the same mob code structure can be used for all livestock categories on the farm. It avoids clashes like Stallion/Steer and Billy goat/Bull.

The Category/Subcategory code will be used to distinguish livestock types.

You will be familiar with using sex and age and perhaps tag colour to identify mobs. 

Category codes and Subcategory codes

Category codes are numbers (in the range 1 to 9) and Sub-Category codes are in the range A to Z. They are used to complete the mob code and are used to distinguish livestock types.

Typical Categories will be

• Cattle 1
• Sheep 2
• Horses 3
• Goats 4
• Etc…

Typical Subcategories will be :

For Category 1

• Hereford
• Angus
• Brangus
• Cross Breed

For Category 2

• Studs
• Commercials
• Flock
• Culls

To help explain ...

If, for example, you have a stock class of merino ewes, 2004 drop with blue tags and you decide to class them.

You decide to split them up into three new mobs, the "tops", the "commercials" and the "culls".

All these mobs have the characteristics

SEX- YEAR BORN -TAG COLOUR - SHEEP

F- 04 - BLUE                   2

but another factor is required to distinguish between them.

agCOMMANDER uses the subcategory codes (A, B, D) to distinguish between these three stock classes.

A stock class is thus a group of animals that shares a common age, a common sex description, a common tag colour and a common type.

To make it easier to remember which category code is which, you can enter a long description to describe each code you use.

A typical description for a subcategory is: "Merino flock sheep".

In many cases, users in the past have found that a single category and subcategory is all that was needed. The more complex your livestock enterprise, the more mob codes you'll need to employ.