I’m trying to remove multiple animals from a group (basically starting over with my farm records). Is there a way to do this besides deleting each log assigning them to the group?
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Welcome to the farmOS forum @plowandstarsfarm1!
Great question - unfortunately, farmOS 1.x does not have a way to “unset” group membership (nor location for that matter), without deleting all the logs that set the group membership of the asset(s).
farmOS 2.x, however (which is in active development and is slated for release this spring) will provide that ability (for both group membership and location). There will be a new checkbox on logs that says “this log is a movement” or “this log assigns group membership”, and then farmOS will look at the “Location” / “Group” field to see which locations/groups the asset is being moved/assigned to. To “unset” location/membership, you will create a log that checks that checkbox but does NOT specify a location/group. Thus, when farmOS is figuring out current membership, it will see that log, find that it doesn’t have any group, and say “ok this asset isn’t in a group”.
In the meantime, one thing you could do is create a temporary group called “No Group” or something (this is a workaround, so bear with me), and a single group membership assignment log that puts all animals into that group. This would serve to indicate to you when you are looking at an animal that they aren’t in a group (even though they technically are). And then, if you want to clean that up once 2.x is ready, you can simply edit that log, remove the group, make sure the checkbox is checked, and save. Then you’ll be able to delete the “No Group” group, and everything should work the same. It’s a workaround, but it should work.
Hope that helps!
Hm. I am still a little confused but I think I understand. So I was able to upload a csv file of all my animals to my farm, but now I have lots of repeat animals, some that are group members and some that are not. I guess I should work on deleting the repeat records that are not already part of a group and then creating some new groups for 2021 grazing plan?
A related question: if I have one size paddock at this time of year, and a different size paddock at a different time of year (because we split the flock after lambing) is there any way to account for this when setting up paddocks, assuming that the flocks will be rotating back to the same field in which they were earlier in the year?
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I may be missing something, but you can just have three areas where two of them represent the post-lambing configuration and one of them represents the combined configuration. A little clever naming and possibly setting the two areas as children of the combined one can probably make it clear what’s going on.
I don’t think there’s a way to hide the inactive paddock configuration at certain times of year or anything like that though…
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Sorry, I should have been clearer - we’ll have around 50-100 different paddocks over the course of the year…
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So I was able to upload a csv file of all my animals to my farm, but now I have lots of repeat animals, some that are group members and some that are not. I guess I should work on deleting the repeat records that are not already part of a group and then creating some new groups for 2021 grazing plan?
Hmm yea sounds like you’ll need to clean those up. Your original post sounded like you were just trying to reorganize existing records, but you’re also importing new ones in bulk at the same time?
Tip: don’t import Groups. Create them manually (assuming you don’t have a dozens of different herds?) If you have a lot of new animals, import them via CSV (and understand that CSV imports ALWAYS create new animals - they don’t update existing animals - so don’t import an animal that already exists).
Then, once your animals are in you can assign them to the new groups you create in bulk. The easiest way to do this is to go to Assets > Animals, click the checkboxes next to all of the animals you want to add to a group, and then click the “Group” button that appears at the bottom of the page. This will assign them all at once with a single Log.
if I have one size paddock at this time of year, and a different size paddock at a different time of year (because we split the flock after lambing) is there any way to account for this when setting up paddocks
@plowandstarsfarm1 Are the sub-paddock configurations “permanent” (in the sense that they are the same from year to year)? Or do you use moveable fencing or other “temporary” paddock configurations?
If they are permanent, I would agree with @Symbioquine that the best option is to represent them as areas. If they are temporary, it is possible to draw these geometries on the individual movement logs when the fencing is set up and the animals are moved there. The new “Animal move” quick form helps a lot with this. See also: Movements and location | farmOS (all the way at the bottom it describes the “Movement geometry” field on Logs).
The paddocks are not permanent; they are constructed using moveable fencing as we rotate the animals, so it doesn’t really make sense to build each one as an area. But my understanding was that in order to create a grazing plan, the first thing I needed to do was to set up all the paddocks - in which case it would not work to construct them as we move the flock. Sorry to be so dense about this. Really trying to make it work for our operation but it’s very much not intuitive for me…
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No worries @plowandstarsfarm1! Thanks for the clarification.
One of the biggest limitations of the Grazing module right now is that it doesn’t handle farmOS’s “temporary” geometry features very well. It’s possible to use them together, but it’s tricky and requires manually changing geometries, which is no fun.
We are hoping to address this in the next version of the Grazing module for farmOS 2.x.
In the meantime, we actually created an “in between” solution this past year: the “Animal move” quick form. It allows you to create movement logs with specific geometry for your animals, and it has some pseudo-planning abilities too (you can load logs back into the same quick form and mark them as done later).
It doesn’t have the full “plan” capabilities of the Grazing Plan module (like calculations for recommended grazing period, rest period, etc) - but it may be enough for most people. We designed it with the input of Stonyfield for their farmers that are using it. They didn’t need the full-blown Grazing Plan feature set, and needed to be able to draw custom geometries on the fly.
You can enable this quick form by clicking the “Quick” tab on your dashboard, then the “Configure” sub-tab, where you should see it as an option to enable.