You likely have many routine treatments that you give to your animals. There are probably common remedies that you have found for different diseases and conditions, and of course a series of vaccinations when they are born and as they age. You might even have other commonly stacked treatments like branding and dehorning that take place at the same time. To save time, you can create livestock Treatment Templates to reuse over and over, and even connect them in a Treatment Group to apply multiple templates in one action.
Creating Treatment Templates
You can create and use these Treatment Templates and Treatment Groups from both individual animals and livestock groups; they are also interchangeable between the two. You can navigate to the Treatment tab on either type of record to create a template. When you're there, click the actions button and select Treatment templates. You'll see any existing templates, and can choose Add template to create a new one. Treatment templates are available for livestock and crops, so if your Farmbrite plan includes both, you'll select which type to create.
The set up page should look familiar if you've created individual treatments previously, as you're adding many of the commonly used fields in advance. Any information that you add to fields on the template will be automatically added to new treatments that you create from it. So the treatment type, inventory item deductions, withdrawal and retreatment periods, application method, cost, etc. will all be inherited to future treatments that use this template.
In our example below, we're creating a template to apply 5 milliliters of a tetanus vaccine subcutaneously, and have it automatically removed from our inventory in Barn A. After supplying all of the details about the treatment in the template, click Save and it will be added as a template to use in the future.
If you need to make changes to a template, you can click the actions menu and choose to edit it, or delete it all together. Be aware that changing existing templates does not change previously created treatments that used it; it will update going forward for newly created treatments.
Connecting Templates as Treatment Groups
While you could certainly create stand alone templates for unique treatment applications, we also know that you'll likely be giving your animals a series of treatments at once. A great example of this would be a vaccine regimen that contains multiple vaccines that are normally given together at a specific age. If you routinely give the same treatments together, you can join them as a series and apply them all at once. After you create each template, you can choose to Add Group, and then build a group of up to five templates. You'll give the group a name and description, and then select what templates should be added to the group.
In our example below, we are creating a series of vaccines to give to our livestock.
Using Treatment Templates and Groups
After you have created your templates and optionally connected them as groups, you can now apply them to individual animals or livestock groups.
On an indivdiual animal, simply choose Use Template. You'll add a date for the treatment and then select a Template or Group to apply from the dropdown menu. You'll see the planting preloaded into the Associate To field as well. Click create, and you'll see the template loaded. All of your preloaded fields are completed automatically, but you can make any adjustments if you need, and also complete any custom fields as well.
The process is nearly identical for a Livestock group, except that you'll have a selection to apply the template per head, or as a total for the group. If you are applying a shared treatment like a water or food additive that the animals will graze from, you might select total for group to distribute the amount amongst the animals. If the template amounts you supplied reflect how much you give to each animal, leave it set to the default for per head.
Also, note that if you are using a Template Group, the treatments will be applied immediately; there is not an opportunity to edit them. So be sure the amounts, costs, and other details are correct in the templates before you apply the group. You can always apply templates individually instead if you need to make updates to the standard amounts or procedures.
Reach out to us if you have any questions about using this feature!