Setting Up Your Flock

To set up a new flock select the 'Add New Flock' option from the sheep menu.

The flock setup screen is then displayed as follows:

Simply enter the Flock Name and main breed of sheep.

The next stage of adding sheep to the flock does depend on whether you wish to record them individually or as a Commercial flock where individual records are not recorded.

If you wish to record details of a Commercial flock with no individual records, this needs to be carried out via the Sheep Flock Register. Details on this can be found in the Maintaining Your Flock Record page.

If you wish to record details of individual sheep or they are not currently tagged but you would like to tag them then the easiest way to create your flock is by specifying the number of ewes and specifying their age. If you are going to tag the animals specify the tag start number and prefix. The system will then automatically create the ewe and assign the next available tag number. The eldest animals are numbered first.

If your animals are currently ear tagged, we would recommend that the flock is initally created empty and the animals imported from an import file. See Importing Sheep From File. The main reason for this is it's very unlikely that the current eartags are sequential.

You may add the animals individually to an existing flock but this may become very time consuming if you have a large number of animals.

If you have a large number of animals who are being tagged with NEW eartags from a new batch of eartags with sequential numbers, you are able to add a batch of animals in bulk.

This can done by taking options - Sheep - New Animals - Add batch of animals.

After being prompted to backup your database, the following screen will be seen:

 

Flock Name

Pick the desired flock from the names in the drop down list.

Setup Date

The setup date is used to identify the date of birth of the animals. Animals are recorded with an aproximate DoB of April 1st, the year is calculated from the age of the animal.
eg. Based on the data above, a 5 year old (with 5 in the Age box), will be created with a Date of Birth of 01/04/2004. An animal born in 2009, should have an Age of 0 when adding.

Tag Prefix

Specify the tag prefix. This will be the part of the ear tag number that will be the same for each animal and identify your flock. It could be your flock number for example.

Tag Start Number

Specify the start number for the automatic assignment of unique ear tag numbers for the animals.

Breed

Select the breed of your sheep from the drop down list. If the breed is not specified, you need to set up your Sheep Breeding List.

Sex

Select the animal sex. Tick the "Breeding Stock" box if these are breeding animals.

Total Animals

Select the total number of animals that have been tagged in that sequence. Once you click 'OK', individual sheep records will be created for this number, starting with the Start number as you specified above.

---