Animals in My Block Hand

📋 Before you start

How the Animals section is organised.

Animals is the core of My Block Hand — most other parts of the app hang off it. Paddock rest depends on where your stock are, withholding periods come from treatments, and the calendar fills up from jobs and due dates recorded against animals.

The list is a drill-down, not one long roll: species → herds → animals. The header tells you how many species, herds and animals you have. Tap a species to see its herds, a herd to open its profile, an animal to open its profile. That keeps it readable whether you've got four sheep or four hundred — and when you already know which animal you want, the search box at the top of the card is quicker than any of it.

1️⃣ Adding an animal

One at a time, or a whole line of tags.

From the Animals card, use the + button and pick + Animal. You can also reach it from + Animal in the quick-capture row on Today's Brief, or the + menu at the top of any screen.

Only species and name are required. Everything else can be filled in later, and it's better to get an animal recorded roughly today than perfectly next week. The fields worth understanding:

• Species — pick from the list or choose Other and type your own. The species you choose drives the breeding terminology (ewe/ram, cow/bull), the care schedules and the milestone templates.
• Tag — must be unique across your active animals. The app checks as you type and tells you if it clashes.
• DOB — worth setting. It gives you age, drives NAIT tagging deadlines for cattle and deer, and feeds the hand-rearing schedule.
• Herd — type a new one or pick an existing. This is how animals get grouped; see section 3.
• Purpose — set this to Dairy / Milking or Fibre / Wool and the Production section appears on your dashboard.
• Paddock — where it is now. Used by paddock rest and grazing.
• Class, value, breed, colour/markings, microchip, height, notes and a photo — all optional.

If you're registered or breeding stud

Further down the record there's a group of fields aimed at registered and stud animals. They're optional and they don't get in the way if you're not using them:

• Registration number, Registered / stud name and Registry / stud book — the body the animal is registered with, e.g. an association or herd book.
• DNA / genomic results — a free-text box for parentage verification, genetic panels and test results. It prints on the animal's record, which is what a buyer usually wants to see.
• NLIS ID — appears for cattle, sheep and goats if your farm runs the Australian NLIS scheme. NAIT works the same way for New Zealand. You set which scheme(s) apply in Settings → Compliance schemes, and you can run both — that's there for a farm physically in New Zealand that also breeds for the Australian market.

Adding a batch

For a line of tagged animals, use + Bulk animals. Set a tag prefix, a start and end number and a padding, and it generates the range — S, 1 to 50, padding 3 gives S001 to S050, with a preview before you commit. Shared details (species, DOB, breed, herd, purpose, class, paddock, value each) apply to the whole batch, and you can edit any of them individually afterwards.

2️⃣ Finding an animal, and the Animal Profile

Tap an animal and you get something to read.

Three ways to get to an animal. Search at the top of the Animals card is the fastest — type any part of a name, tag, herd, breed, species, class, registration number, NAIT or NLIS number, microchip or DNA reference and matching animals come up as you type. Animals that have left the farm stay out of the results until you turn them on. Or drill down through species → herd → animal. Or open All animals for a flat sortable table — tag, name, species, class, breed, herd, DOB, paddock, days in paddock and value. Animals not in a herd sits on the Animals page itself, so anything ungrouped can't quietly disappear.

Underneath, Next actions lists the animals that need something — named, with what it is and when it's due, and a button that goes to the right place. It shows the five most urgent with View all for the rest.

Tapping an animal opens its profile: a page to read, in four tabs.

• Overview — the next thing this animal needs, then its health at a glance: last treatment, any active withholding period, latest weight, body condition and FAMACHA with the change since the reading before, and recent activity.
• Records — everything that has ever happened to it: condition checks, treatments, breeding, births, jobs and movements, filterable and sortable.
• Breeding — its cycles and their outcomes, the milestone timeline, its offspring, and View pedigree. Sections 5, 6 and 7.
• Details — the full record, and Edit all details when you need to change something.

Two buttons sit with the tabs. + Record opens a short list — Treatment, Weight & condition, Breeding, Birth, Hand rearing, Job — and each one saves on its own. The ••• menu holds Edit details, Change herd / paddock, Print / share record, Record exit, Harvest / home-kill and Delete animal.

What "needs action" counts

The Need action tile and the N due badge on a herd card both count animals — how many animals need something, not how many pieces of paperwork exist. An animal that needs three things counts once. Breeding milestones and due dates count. Animals in no herd count. A treatment you completed two years ago does not. That is the same population Next actions names, so the badge and the list can't disagree.

When an animal leaves

Don't delete it. Delete is for records created by mistake — it removes the history too. For an animal that's actually gone, use one of:

• Record exit — died, culled, sold or lost/missing, with a date and a reason. The animal retires from your active herd and its full record stays. A sale can post the income to Finances.
• Harvest / home-kill — dressed weight, live weight, value, and whether it was home kill or works. Logs the meat under Production and retires the animal.

3️⃣ Herds and the Herd Profile

Grouping animals so you can move and treat them together.

There's no separate "create a herd" step. A herd exists as soon as you type its name into an animal's Herd field — type it once and it's offered as a suggestion for every animal after that. To move an animal between herds, open it and change the field.

Tapping a herd opens its profile, in four tabs:

• Overview — what's due across the herd, where it is, and how it's made up.
• Animals — everyone in it, searchable, each one a tap from its own profile.
• Breeding — the cycles running in this herd and how the last season turned out.
• Activity — what has actually been recorded on the herd.

The ••• menu holds Rename herd, Move herd, Treatment — which records one treatment across every animal in the herd — and Add job.

Herds are worth setting up properly because they're the unit almost everything else works on — moving stock, treating a group, jobs, and herd-level finance all key off them. A herd can be as small as you like; "House cow" with one animal in it is perfectly reasonable.

4️⃣ Moving animals and herds

Recording a shift, and why the date matters.

Use + Movement from the Animals or Paddocks card, Move Herd on a herd, or Move Herd Here from a paddock. The form asks for:

• Herds — tick one or more.
• Movement date and time. Time is optional but lets grazing be tracked to the hour.
• Current paddock — filled in for you, showing its rest period.
• Move to paddock — tick one, or several if the mob grazes them together with the gates open.
• Notes.

To move a single animal rather than a herd, edit that animal and change its Paddock field.

Movements are what paddock rest is calculated from, so logging them is what makes the grazing side of the app work. A paddock's rest clock starts when stock come off it.

5️⃣ Breeding, births and weaning

From what you put together, to what you weaned off it.

Open an animal and use + Record → Breeding, or the Breeding tab on its profile. The dialog does two separate jobs, and it's worth being clear which is which.

Heritage — this animal's parents

Pick a Father (Sire) and Mother (Dam) from your other animals and tap Save parentage. This is about where this animal came from. It's what builds your family lines over time, what the pedigree draws from, and what the inbreeding check reads.

Breeding events — matings involving this animal

Terminology follows the species, so on a ewe you'll see ewe and ram rather than generic labels. The first field is Type, and it decides what the rest of the form asks you for:

• Served / mated (one date) — you know the day. Enter the date bred and an expected due date.
• Exposed — ran together (date range) — the honest option for most blocks. You put the ram out and took him away again; you don't know which night. Enter in with male from and removed / taken out, and the app works out the expected birth window from the species gestation. Leave the "removed" date blank while he's still in with them and it shows an earliest date and tells you it's ongoing.

On an exposed record there's also Observed mating on (optional). If you happened to see a mating, put the date in and you get a most likely due date sitting inside the wider window — the precision of a known service without pretending the rest of the range doesn't exist.

Recording the birth

Set the outcome to Born and tap Record birth. Enter how many arrived and you get a row per young, so the detail goes in while you're standing there rather than never:

• Sex / class, alive or stillborn/died, birth weight, a tag, a name and a comment, per young.
• Assistance on the birth itself — unassisted, assisted or vet assisted.
• Each one becomes an animal record, pre-filled with the species, herd, breed and paddock, and with both parents already linked.
• A birth weight goes into that animal's weight history, so it's the first point on its growth record rather than a number in a note.
• A stillborn or died-at-birth young is still created and linked to its parents, then retired from your active herd with an exit record. It stays in the pedigree and it counts in your losses — which is the whole reason to record it.

Recording weaning

Weeks or months later, the same breeding record grows a Record weaning button. You get a row per young: mark each one weaned or lost before weaning, and add a weaning weight if you weighed them.

• The date defaults to the birth date plus your species' own weaning milestone, so it's usually right or close.
• A loss retires that animal with an exit record — its record and its place in the pedigree are kept.
• A weaning weight goes into the animal's weight history alongside its birth weight.
• Anything already sold or gone shows as read-only, so a sale never gets counted as a loss.
• The breeding record then shows your survival to weaning and average weaning weight.

6️⃣ Pedigree, printing and sharing

Something to hand a buyer.

Pedigree

Open an animal, go to its Breeding tab and tap View pedigree. On a computer you get the familiar bracket family tree — the animal plus four generations of ancestors, built from the parentage you've recorded. On a phone the same information is a stacked list: sire and dam as rows, with their own sire and dam indented underneath. No sideways scrolling, no tiny text.

Tap any recorded ancestor to open its profile. A slot you haven't filled in reads "Sire not recorded" or "Dam not recorded" — a plain statement, not a complaint.

You won't have every ancestor as an animal on your block, and you don't need to. Edit pedigree lets you type an ancestor's name straight into an empty slot — an imported sire, a grandmother from the farm you bought her from. Typed ancestors show in the tree beside your recorded ones, marked "Not a Block Hand record" so nobody mistakes a name for a full record. They aren't tappable, because there's nothing behind them to open.

If the recorded parentage loops back on itself — an animal appearing among its own ancestors — that branch stops and says "Repeated relationship in stored pedigree". Nothing is changed or corrected for you; it's your data and it's flagged rather than quietly rearranged.

Print / Save as PDF gives you the tree on a page, branded with your farm name.

The whole animal on one page

Print / share record, from the ••• menu, prints an individual animal's full record as a one-pager, in sections: an identity photo if it has one, Identity, Registration & compliance (including registry, stud name, DNA results and NAIT/NLIS), Parentage and a Pedigree summary down to grandparents, Breeding history, Offspring, Health & treatments, a Condition trend, and your Notes. Any active withholding period appears as a warning at the top. It's what you want when an animal is going to a new home, going to the vet, or being shown to someone thinking about buying it.

Sharing an animal

The same sheet gives you two ways to send an animal to somebody, and they send different things on purpose.

• Copy summary (and Share) — a short, factual summary: name and tag, breed, sex and age, herd and paddock, latest weight, breeding status, and any active withholding period. That's it. It deliberately leaves out your private notes, any money, and the treatment history. It's what you'd read out over the phone.
• Copy full record — the comprehensive text: every treatment with its product and active ingredients, every condition reading with your notes on it, breeding, offspring, the lot.
• Print / Save as PDF — the full one-pager, unchanged, in a browser.

7️⃣ The milestone timeline

What's due for a pregnant animal and its young.

The timeline, on an animal's Breeding tab, turns its breeding events into a checklist: pregnancy checks, vaccinations, the birth itself, and young-stock care milestones afterwards. Each is dated from the mating and ticked off as it's done, with young-stock items tagged so you can see which apply to the offspring rather than the mother.

The defaults are per species and fully editable — you can change the day offsets, turn individual milestones off, or reset back to the standard set. They're starting points from general practice, not veterinary advice, and if your vet does things differently then your vet is right.

Timeline items surface in Reminders and the farm calendar alongside everything else, so a scanning date doesn't depend on you opening the animal to notice it.

8️⃣ Treatments and jobs

The difference, and why withholding is the point.

A treatment is something you gave an animal. A job is work to be done, which may or may not involve a treatment. Both can attach to an animal, a herd or a selection of animals.

Recording a treatment

For one animal, open it and use + Record → Treatment. For a whole mob, use + Treatment on the Animals action row or ••• → Treatment on the herd — one form, every animal in the herd. You get the treatment type (vaccine, drench, lice, fly strike or other), the date and optional time given, a repeat interval if it's recurring, and withholding periods for meat, milk, eggs and wool plus a custom one.

It saves when you press Save on that form — there's no second step and nothing else to remember.

Jobs

+ Record → Job on an animal creates a job already attached to it, and ••• → Add job does the same for a herd. Jobs have a due date and optional time, a title, a repeat interval, and can be marked complete with a completion date. A job can carry treatment details, in which case it records the treatment and its withholding when you complete it.

What happens automatically

• Withholding periods are calculated and surface as warnings — on the animal's profile, at the top of its printed record, in its share summary, and when you try to move stock into an affected paddock or record production from an animal still inside a withholding window.
• Recurring treatments generate their next due date.
• Drench follow-up — log a drench on an animal and a one-off reminder appears about twelve days later, prompting a condition check or faecal egg count. That window is roughly when you'd expect to see whether the drench actually worked. Closing that loop over a season is how you find out if resistance is building on your block, which is a question most people never get an answer to.

9️⃣ Hand rearing

Bottle lambs, calves and kids.

If an animal ends up on milk — a rejected lamb, a pen of calves — open it and use + Record → Hand rearing. That creates a feeding record linked to the animal, carrying its name, herd and date of birth across, so the rearing sits in its history rather than in a separate list.

From there you set a feeding plan by age range, log every feed, and get the mix worked out for a whole group. It has enough to it that it has its own guide:

📖 How to use hand rearing in My Block Hand →

✅ Getting started

If you're setting up from scratch.

The order that causes the least rework:

• Paddocks first, so animals have somewhere to be.
• Then animals — bulk entry for anything tagged in a line, individually for the ones with names. Set the herd as you go.
• Then Products & Chemicals, before you record any treatments, so withholding fills itself in.
• Then log as you go. Movements when stock shift, treatments when you give them, condition checks when you handle them.
• And log births and weaning in the season they happen. Everything else on this list can be caught up later. Those two can't — there's no way to go back and record what you weaned off a mother two seasons ago.

You don't need history to start. A record that begins today is still a record that's three years deep in three years.

🌱 The farming behind the feature

Want to understand the principles, not just the screens?

This page covers how to record animal health in My Block Hand. If you want the farming side — what clostridial vaccines protect against, why the full primary course is what builds protection, how sheep, goats and cattle differ, and what to record so a booster is never missed — read the Farm Guide: Livestock vaccination for small farms.