Kristi Peyton prepared a document that outlines the steps involved in using farmOS to track movements of animals through paddocks, as part of a presentation we gave to Stonyfield dairy farmers. She gave me permission to share this with the larger community, and integrate it into the farmOS.org user guide if we want. Posting it here as a first step… 
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Wow, that’s awesome!
Perhaps transferring this over to farmos.org could be a good task for someone for It’s My farmOS!?
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I was thinking that too! Maybe we can start a little list of things in the It’s My farmOS post.
Nice work, @kpeyton ; very easy to follow. Seems a much easier approach than what is specified in the “Grazing Plan” module. Thanks for sharing it here!
Question: are you using this method to not only track animal moves after they happen, but also to plan moves ahead?
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@walt Yes! This document was created to help a group of organic dairy farmers begin tracking their rotational grazing, so the hope is that they could plan out movement logs ahead of time and then mark them as completed once the herd was moved. Setting these up multiple at a time should help save them time in the long run.
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@kpeyton : cool! If it works for such purpose, then it will probably work for mine (Holistic Planned Grazing with donkeys, sheep and chickens). There are some specific metrics about HPG -e.g. ADAs, or Animal Days per Acre (assumptions on which the plan is based, which get refined based on actual experience)- that the Grazing Plan module does implement, but in rather a heavyweight design that i’m afraid may prove too much work for us to maintain. I like to think that your more agile workflow could work for the essential data we want to track in the database (i.e. actual moves), and then simply update our planned moves by updating dates on the “Not Done” logs, once they get too far out of whack.
Anyway Kristi, i am curious to know if you have tried or looked into the Grazing Plan module, and if so, then why you decided not to use it.
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curious to know if you have tried or looked into the Grazing Plan module, and if so, then why you decided not to use it.
I worked with @kpeyton to figure out what the farmers needed to collect. The grazing module provides a lot of additional features for calculating grazing time, but it requires an extra layer of data entry and management too. For these farmers, the primary need is recording the movements - so keeping it simple keeps the barrier low for them to get going. But I did mention the grazing module as a next step, for any who want to go beyond the basics and would find that process valuable.
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On this topic,
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I would assume planting and crop management would be hay management for livestock.
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With the future of livestock requiring RFID tags in the next 3-4 years, what are we looking at for inclusion? I also understand they are still figuring out the veterinarian aspects of this. My fear is that it will cost money to get simple things updated in records for tags and become a barrier for medication administration and vaccinations. Anyhow…
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With regards to animal management, why aren’t we using aggregate data yet to auto fill in fields from calculations available all over the extensions. Like -> bull turned out, then i could just quickly check on logs for preg check, auto calculate expected calving, etc, see metrics on cows for history -> disease-> calving ease -> lb/acre on feed, etc.
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since we are open source : RFID -> wifi/cell -> through arduno to track rotational paddock movements with a sensor at the gatepost or a wand for later. I’m thinking some sort of detailed API once the phone app is in version 1.0+ to write back simple things. Currently RFID for small and middle people like me is cost prohibitive and I refuse to do it due to the amount of money I need for decent antennas to read and tags. I think planning could begin, but would be infancy until USDA handed out RFID format for storage.
Any thoughts or other people running livestock?
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All great thoughts @tool172 - we’ve talked about many of these ideas - now we just need someone to build them! 
I’d love to see a workflow like: scan an RFID tag with your phone, it brings up the animal record in farmOS, enter a medical log (or weight, observation, movement, etc)… done! Voice activated would be even faster (and perhaps helpful while your hands are occupied with the animal).
I’ve heard of a few people playing with DIY sensors to track animal movements via tagged collars. Not sure if it’s documented anywhere. Check farmhack.org. I’d love to see something like that integrated with farmOS to auto-generate movement logs.
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@mstenta I wanted to check out this rotational grazing doc – just requested access via drive. Would you recommend this method or the grazing module I see discussed here?
@danigrover I granted access. That document is very old at this point, but there may still be some useful concepts in it, so maybe worth reviewing. A lot of it refers to the old Grazing module that was available for farmOS v1, which is no longer available on v3 (we didn’t have the resources to port it at the time), but some of it is also just general farmOS concepts.
Some good news: we may have some resources to start working on a v3 upgrade of the grazing module. It will be approached differently than the v1 (and won’t have an upgrade path, most likely). We have another forum topic for that here if you are interested in helping to shape the direction of it!
@mstenta okay, good to know! it sounds like maybe the plans module is what i’d want to use to map out future paddocks then?
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@danigrover The plans module doesn’t actually provide anything itself out-of-the-box. The Grazing plan module will provide a type of plan, and the supporting UI for that.
If you want to plan future movements, you can do that without a formal “Plan”. Try enabling the “Movement Quick Form” module. It let’s you record (and plan) movements for animals/herds/any asset, including custom geometry (eg: for temporary fencing).
The Grazing plan module will probably leverage that quick form too, so using it now will be a similar process.
For context, “Plans” just provide a way to group/visualize records in fun ways. But you can still create all the same records without a “Plan” that groups them. Here’s an example of what the “Crop Plan” module looks like:
Thank you for explaining that, @mstenta Perhaps this next question deserves it’s own thread but it feels related since it’s about movements.
I just had lambs born and I used the birth quick form to add them. I just noticed that they aren’t automatically located where the rest of the flock is. What should I do to put them with the rest of the flock? Do I need to enter another separate log? It seems like the birth log should assume that the new animals are with the rest of them.
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The birth quick form will attempt to set the location of the children to the location of the mother (in the birth log). It will also attempt to assign children to the same group as the mother (if you are using the Group module).
Does your mother asset have a location?
@mstenta So, I am pretty sure that I used the birth quick form to make this log. Here is the mother and I thought that she was within a geometry but it turns out that her current location is listed as N/A here.
I guess what happened is that when I did the movement log, I created a geometry for the movement that wasn’t a location that i’d created so it’s not being recognized as such?
The reason this happened is because I wanted to accurately map out the paddock that I created for these sheep and it overlapped two location areas that I had already created so I couldn’t just choose one or the other of the already created areas.
Does that make sense?
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Yeah, I’m confused by this. When I look at Animal assets it is showing that 32 are in this location. But when I look at the individuals, all of their current locations say “N/A”
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Maybe you have the Ewe Flock group’s location set to that field? See Group membership | farmOS
That said, it seems like the resulting location should be reflected on the individual asset (animal) pages too so that’s a bit confusing.
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@symbioniquine thank you for these thoughts!
So, after reading the documentation you sent, I checked my group logs and realized that I hadn’t completed the move. I had a pending move (I’m mapping them out as @mstenta recommended using pending movement logs). I changed the log from pending to done and nothing changed about the lambs’ locations. Then I realized that my movement log was still set to a future date (I ended up moving them a day earlier than anticipated). I switched the date to this morning and then the records on the individuals changed!
Thanks for helping me through this process of learning the platform. I’m very grateful for what you all have built here.
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Let me know if this comment/question would be better placed elsewhere in the forum.
I’m currently mapping out future movements – looking ahead throughout the season and thinking through where I want to move my flock when.
Something that I am realizing would be very helpful is the ability to visualize my previous pending movements when creating my next ones.
When a movement log has been completed and you start to create another one for that asset/group, the previous geometry shows where that asset/group currently is. This is super helpful since I’m often moving them next door to an adjacent paddock that I build with temporary fence (in physical space) and with geometry (on FarmOS) based on where the previous paddock was.
If I could also see pending moves show up in the visualization of the movement quickform and/or in the movement log form map, that’d be amazing.
If I could additionally see the dates of the pending logs overlaid onto the geometry, that would be even better!
Curious to hear folks’ thoughts on this…
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