How to use hand rearing in My Block Hand

📋 Before you start

What this section is for, and what it isn't.

Hand rearing keeps the feed record for milk-fed young stock — a bottle lamb, a goat kid, or twenty calves on a feeder. It holds your feeding plan, works out how much to mix for a group, logs every feed with a time stamp, and puts the next feed on Today's Brief.

Why it's built that way: rearing is a memory and consistency problem more than a knowledge one. With two people on a block, "has anyone done the four o'clock?" gets answered by guessing — and a double feed is a genuine bloat risk, not just a wasted bottle.

1️⃣ Finding it

Three ways in, depending on where you're standing.

• From an animal you've already recorded — open it under Animals and tap 🍼 Hand rearing in the row of buttons at the top. This is the most common route and the one to use where you can.
• From Today's Brief — the 🍼 Hand rearing tile once you have an animal on milk, or the + Hand rearing button in the quick-log row.
• From the + menu at the top of any screen.

The button on an animal's record only appears for a saved, active sheep, cattle or goat — those are the species with rearing built in. It changes label once that animal is on milk, showing you its feed count for the day (🍼 Hand rearing (2/4 today)), so the animal's own record doubles as a status check.

2️⃣ Add the animal

Start from the record you already have.

The usual way this begins isn't a planned rearing pen — it's a lamb you recorded at birth, and four days later the ewe has kicked it off.

Going in via 🍼 Hand rearing on that animal's record carries its name, herd and date of birth across and links the two records together, so the feeding sits in that animal's history alongside its health and breeding for the rest of its life. Tap the button again later and you're editing the same record, not making a second one.

Starting fresh instead — calves off a dairy farm, say — open Hand rearing and tap + Add an animal. For adding the animals themselves, see the Animals section guide.

The other fields: Herd / group is what ties animals together for mixing and is worth filling in even for one animal; Wean date is a rough editable guide, not a rule; Feed times can be left blank to spread automatically across the day; and Currently feeding is what you untick when the animal is weaned.

3️⃣ A mob at once

Twenty calves without twenty forms.

In the add panel, tick Adding several at once. You get the same tag-range fields as bulk animal entry: a prefix, a number range and a digit count. C, 1 to 20, 3 digits gives you C001 to C020, with a preview before you commit.

They're created as individual records sharing one feeding plan. That matters both ways — one plan to maintain, but a calf that needs holding back, weaning later, or its own note is still its own record.

Put them all in the same herd / group and you get a Fed all button, which is what makes a pen of twenty survivable at two feeds a day.

4️⃣ The feeding plan

Your amounts, set by age range.

Tap Feeding plan on an animal's row. If no plan covers that animal yet the button reads Set feeding plan, so the prompt sits next to the fix.

A plan is a list of age ranges, and you fill in what you actually feed for each:

• Days 3–7 — 4 feeds a day, 250ml each, 50g powder each
• Days 8–21 — 4 feeds a day, 350ml each, 70g powder each

Add the next range whenever you change what you're doing. Between ranges the amounts hold steady. Past your last range the app says so — "no age range covers day 22" — rather than producing a number.

Save plan checks your ranges before accepting them: overlapping ranges (the earlier one wins, which is worth knowing), gaps where nothing covers an age, and ranges with no millilitres set. The plan belongs to the group, so editing it updates every animal in that herd at once.

5️⃣ Mixing and logging

What to make up, and marking it done.

Mix for the next feed totals one feed for the whole group — "Mix 200g powder, then top up with warm water to make 1L" for four lambs on 250ml each. Mixed-age groups are handled: if one lamb is on a different range, it totals each animal's own amount rather than assuming they match.

The panel also tells you which range you're in and how long it runs — and if you've entered the next one, what's coming. If you haven't, it says that instead of guessing.

Then log it: Fed now on an animal, or Fed all on the group header. The count shows as 2/4 today and the next feed time appears on Today's Brief, so the question "has that been done?" has an answer that isn't someone's memory.

6️⃣ Weaning

Stopping, and what happens to the record.

When an animal is done, open it with Edit and untick Currently feeding. It drops off Today's Brief and out of the mix totals, its row shows Weaned / stopped, and its full feed history stays. Remove is different — that deletes the record and its feed logs, so use it for mistakes, not for finishing.

The wean date on the record is a rough editable guide and nothing more — the app won't act on it or nag you about it.

✅ What the app does vs what you do

The honest split.

My Block Hand handles: the feeding plan you've defined by age range; the mix arithmetic for a group, including mixed ages; a dated log of every feed; the next-feed prompt on Today's Brief; bulk entry for a mob and one-tap Fed all; and the link back to the animal's own record so rearing sits in its lifetime history.

You still decide: what to feed and how much, from your milk powder and your vet; when to move to the next age range; when to wean, based on what they're eating; and when something's wrong enough to need a vet.

By the end of a season that gives you something more useful than any general feeding table — a record of what you actually did and how the animals went on it.

📚 Further reading

The husbandry behind it, from NZ sources.

The app doesn't cover colostrum — it happens before rearing starts — but it's the one thing that can't be fixed later, so it's worth knowing where the guidance sits.

• DairyNZ — Colostrum: 10–12% of bodyweight of good quality colostrum (around 4L for a 40kg calf), within the first 6–12 hours, split into two feeds. The gut closes at 24 hours.
• DairyNZ — Feeding milk to calves: current guidance is at least 20% of bodyweight in milk daily (6–10L for a 25–50kg calf), across at least two feeds — noticeably more than older advice. Also covers why whole milk shouldn't be diluted, and transitioning between powders.
• DairyNZ — Weaning: rumen development, meal and pasture thresholds, minimum weaning weights by breed.
• Beef + Lamb NZ — Beating bloat in orphan lambs and Fact Sheet 80 — Artificial lamb rearing (PDF): lamb colostrum, the yoghurt method for preventing bloat, and why it must be fed cold.