You can import your animal measurements and yields on induvial records, or update them through the bulk actions tool as well. In addition to those input methods, you can now also add measurement and yield records in bulk through an import. The main use for this feature is to add these records for multiple animals at once, using a single import action. For a review on importing data into Farmbrite overall, check out this companion article.
Just navigate to the main livestock homepage, choose the actions icon, and select one of the options.
Importing Animal Measurements
This tool can help you add measurement records for multiple different animals at once. You can choose if you'd like to use the template we provide, or your own spreadsheet. If you to use your own, you'll need to map your file's columns to fields in Farmbrite. The critical component here is that you supply an Animal ID, Tag number, or Electronic ID to identify what animal the measurement is for. Any of those identifying characteristics can be used. Just add your data like height and weight, or other wellness information if you need. be aware that he Health and Environment scores accept values 1-5 to correspond with Poor, Fair, Okay, Good, and Excellent, respectively.
Importing Animal Yields
This is nearly identical to the Animal Measurements outlined above, but used to supply Yield data for your animals. This could be very helpful if you have many cows that you need to record daily milk production for, or different chicken groups to record egg harvests. Just like the measurements, you can either use your own file, or add your measurements to our provided template. You'll need to supply an identifier as well, so be sure the Animal ID (Farmbrite ID), Tag Number, or Electronic ID is supplied. Beyond that, simply import your file and you'll see a confirmation page that alerts you to any errors, and shows how many records were imported successfully.
Updating Records via Import
You can also update your yield and measurement records across muliple animals via import. There are a few important components to this to link them correctly which we outline below.
1. You can export a list of all of your Yields or Measurements by creating a custom report and downloading it as a spreadsheet. Be sure to choose the right fields to add that you need to update, like date, quantity harvested, weight, height, score, etc. You'll effectively create your own "starting sheet" or template via this method.
2. Update any of the data that you need to change in the spreadsheet. Pay specific attention to the first two columns you'll see on the export - ID and Parent ID. These are always included in the report export regardless of what columns you add to the report. These are critical for the import to update the correct records and must be retained on the import sheet. Once updated, save the updated sheet as a CSV file.
3. Access the imports in the same way as above, but be sure to choose the "Update Existing Records" option. Select your file, and in step two you'll map your fields from the sheet to the import. There are two important aspects here, related to the critical fields outlined above.
- You must map the first column "ID" to the "ID" field in Farmbrite. This is the measurement / yield ID.
- You must map the second column " Parent ID" to the "Animal" field in Farmbrite. This is the ID for the unique animal itself.
The combination of both of these tells the software to update a specific measurement or yield on a specific animal.
4. Complete your import, and see your summary for updates and any errors.
Note that for both of these import (and any import in Farmbrite overall), you'll have a maximum of 1000 rows imported at a time. If you need to add more measurements or harvests than that, you'll need to split them up into multiple files.