Having a genetically diverse herd can help promote healthy reproduction, so Farmbrite helps you track livestock siblings to help make the best decisions when breeding animals together. You have the ability to track genealogy and pedigree to get a chart of each animal's ancestry, and can also see siblings directly from an animal's record.
When you open an animal record from your Livestock page, you'll see a field for Siblings in the animal's details. These siblings are classified into two types, direct and indirect.
Direct Siblings are those that were birthed in the same breeding record/using the same breeding source, or share the same birthdate, dam, and sire.
Indirect Siblings are those that were birthed at a different date, but share at least one parent.
In our example image below, we can see that our cow Bertha has one direct sibling, and 9 indirect. The one direct sibling was a twin in the same birth, being born on the same day, with the same dam and sire. The indirect siblings are all different ages, but all share the same sire, our bull Boomer.
Also note that this information is available on the Siblings tab as well, and that it will always show you all siblings, both direct and indirect.
How do I link siblings?
There are a few ways to connect siblings on a record.
First, if you are using Farmbrite's breeding records, when you record a birth that includes multiple animals, the new animals will all automatically be marked as direct siblings.
We also know that you might not use the breeding records for every animal, especially if you're just starting out with Farmbrite and are adding your existing animals to the system. Farmbrite will automatically link siblings when you add birthdate, dam, and sire information. Below you'll see a newborn calf that we created a record for, but no ancestors linked yet, and thus 0 siblings. When we edit the record and include the parents, Farmbrite finds the both direct and indirect siblings and updates the record automatically.
It's that easy! Just make sure you have the parents selected and the correct date of birth, and the software will do the rest to save you time.
Reach out to us if you have any questions about linking siblings or tracing genealogy.