In reality breeding events consistently occur in a certain order. The Mare is Booked to a Stallion, then Served by the Stallion, then pregnancy Scans are performed, then the Mare is confirmed as In Foal, then the Mare Foals (gives birth), then eventually the Foal is Weaned from the Mare (becomes independent). Ideally you will record breeding procedures to Ardex as breeding events take place, and the procedures will follow a certain chronological order.
Technical issues can arise where procedures are recorded late and out of order. For example, if you wait till the end of breeding season, the sit down and retrospectively attempt to record Scan 1 Positive, then Mare Served, then Mare Foaled, then enter a Stallion Booking, then record Final Scan Positive, and so - on a variety of errors will display. The system finds it difficult to cope with procedures being recorded out of order, even if you date every procedure correctly.
What if I Make a Mistake?
We all make mistakes. A procedure may be recorded on the wrong date, a Mare may be recorded as booked to the wrong Stallion, the foal colour or sex or time of birth may be recorded incorrectly, Scan Negative may be recorded instead of Scan Positive, etc. Going back to fix mistakes like this is often the main source of breeding related issues resulting from failure to record procedures in Chronological Order.
In the example below the Procedures Tab for the Mare Blue Paradise shows that the Mare has been involved in breeding for a number of months and has progressed to In Foal status (Pregnancy Test Positive).
If we now realise that the Mare Served procedure has been recorded incorrectly, and needs to be re-recorded at 10 October, what should we do? We could simply go to Main > Procedures then set the date to 18 October and delete the Mare Served procedure. Then we could re-record the procedure dated 10 October. If we do this then open the Procedures Tab again it will look like this:
Everything looks fine, the Mare Served date has changed and the other breeding procedures are intact. The problem is, the Mare Served procedure was actually recorded LAST not FIRST.
Now if we click the Service Details tab for the Mare, the Mare is no longer considered In Foal, and all the Scan results are lost.
Because the Mare is no longer considered to be In Foal, the Mare Foaled procedure will fail. Simply deleting are re-recording the Mare Served procedure without doing anything else has reset the Breeding status of the Mare for the current season. The answer is, Chronological Recording.
Instead of just deleting the Mare Served procedure, the correct approach is to delete all breeding procedures from the newest back to the procedure you need to change. Then re-record all breeding procedures to the system from Oldest to Newest (in order). If you take this approach the procedure history for the Mare will be exactly the same, but Scan results and In Foal results will be preserved.
