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Dairy breeding management
The Breed Cycle Manager
The Breed Cycle Manager

An introduction to the FarmWizard breed cycle manager

Will Rands avatar
Written by Will Rands
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

The Breed Cycle Manager (BCM) is a special section of the FarmWizard system that manages the breeding calendar for each cow in the herd.  

Your FarmWizard herd contains all animals in your herd(s) - female, male, breeding and non-breeding, but only breeding females are added to the BCM.  Normally, a cow is added to the BCM when she first enters the milking herd and is usually only removed when she stops breeding and leaves the milking herd.

Cow Breed States

Cows on the BCM move through a number of breed states, driven by entry of breeding events:
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​(from calving) -> Pre Heat -> Served -> Pregnant -> Dried Off
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If a cow is recorded with a negative pregnancy scan result, she will be returned to the Pre Heat state.

Cows that are in the Dried Off state are assumed to be pregnant.

Breed stage colour coding

FarmWizard uses a set of colour codes to denote the different cow breeding states:

These colours are used to represent cow identities on the "Brayboard" report:

The same colour coding carries through to the smartphone App.

Animal search:

The Cow Card report:

Adding animals to the BCM

Adding an animal to the BCM requires you to enter the freeze brand number (management tag) and set the breed stage (current lactation number).

  1. Go to Dairy Manager > Breed Cycle Manager > Add Cows

  2. This screen will show all females at least 12 months of age that are not currently on the BCM

  3. Click on required ear tag number in the list

  4. Enter the required Freeze Brand/Management Number and select the current breed stage (lactation number)

  5. Click "Update & Add to Breeding Herd"

The animals will show as breed state "Unknown" until you record a breeding event.  If the information is available enter the most recent calving date as a "Historic Birth" event, which will move the cow to the Pre Heat state. 

Adding heifers to the BCM with a temporary brand number 

To add bulling heifers using the last four digits of the official ear tag as a temporary brand number, click the button "Add all heifers > 12 months with last 4 tag digits" which is located at the top of the screen to complete the task in one step.
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Using the Batch Manager to add multiple animals to the BCM

An alternative method of adding animals to the BCM uses the Herd Manager > Batch Manger screen as follows.  This method is suitable if you want to update multiple animal records in one session

  1. Use the filter criteria to define the list of animals you want to freeze brand; for example, age range: 14 to 24 months and sex: female. Click the Filter button

  2. When the animals matching the filter have been highlighted, press the Click to Record Event button at the top right of the screen

  3. On the following screen, click Batch Update Brand to display an editable list of the selected animal records.  Enter the freeze brand and the current lactation number for each one.

  4. When you have entered all the cow data, click "Update Animals" at the bottom of the screen to save the changes

Removing animals from the BCM

When a cow stops breeding, you can remove her from the BCM prior to any subsequent sale ("Off" movement).  Removing a cow from the BCM will prevent her from being included in any of the breeding action lists and herd fertility reports.

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