Program overview

There is a need for a generic system to allow individual animal static details and life event data to be recorded and reported. Life events for farmed livestock are similar across the different animal species and production systems. This means that in principle a single relational database structure can be used with modifications made to allow appropriate labelling for a given species-production system of interest.

In the remainder of this document the term `herd health software' is used to describe the system to allow individual animal event data to be recorded, stored and reported on. A herd health software package is made up of three components:

1. A system to allow individual animal biographical and lifetime events to be electronically recorded, ideally with mechanisms in place to validate data at the time of data entry.
2. A system to allow individual animal biographical and lifetime events to be stored in a herd-flock database.
3. A system to allow individual animal biographical and lifetime events to be extracted from the herd-flock database and then used to produce meaningful reports for a herd-flock manager. Reporting can be at three levels: (a) action reports; (b) tactical reports; and (c) strategic reports. Action reports allow lists of animals due for given tasks or events to be generated (e.g., cows due to calve, cows due on heat). Tactical reports allow a herd manager to report on various aspects of herd management allowing action to be taken in the event of an identified performance shortfall. Strategic reports provide an overview of herd-flock performance allowing high level policy decisions to be made in relation to herd-flock management.

The material presented in this document relates to item (1) --- a system to allow individual animal biographical and lifetime events to be electronically recorded. We describe the structure of a generic relational database required to record individual animal static details and life event data. To populate the tables that comprise the relational database a series of data entry forms are required. The data entry `system' might be deployed as software to run on a personal computer, as an app to run on either a smart phone or tablet, or via a web interface.

A staged approach to whole system development is proposed, as follows:

1. Specification of relational database structure. Specification of forms (and business rules) required to populate each table of the relational database with appropriate data.
2. Development of the relational database. Inclusion of the ability to deploy the database either remotely (`cloud') or on-farm.
3. Development of algorithms for reporting. Inclusion of the ability to report performance of multiple herds-flocks, for benchmarking.

For development Stage 1 a herd-flock will be initiated by creating (using third party software tools) a CSV file listing the core data indicated in the tAnimals table. At the start of the first working day the tAnimals table will be copied from either the cloud or the farm server to the app. This allows herd-flock managers to enter lifetime events (e.g., calvings, heats, services, treatments) for individual animals that already exist in the herd-flock during a given working day.

At the end of a working day (when the herd-flock managers connect the app to the Internet) the data collected by the app during the day will be transfered to either the cloud or the farm server. If tables (i.e., CSV files) already exist on the cloud or on the farm server, the newly collected data will be appended to the existing data files.

At the outset (to keep things simple) only the tAnimals table will be copied to the app. This means that while a herd-flock manager will have access to biographical details for an individual via the app, they won't be able to view all lifetime events for that individual. Modifications to the system might be made in future to allow this to occur.