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Flockbook Management Services

Sheep Ireland Flockbook Management Screens

Introduction

Sheep Ireland have designed a sophisticated flockbook management system which is currently being used by the majority of Irish sheep breed societies to maintain their society flockbooks (see full list below) to manage their day to day society tasks such as pedigree cert generation and sales catalogue generation. There is minimum criteria that a breed society needs to satisfy before they can avail of these flockbook services – see these criteria outlined at the end of this page.

Fees

The annual fees that Sheep Ireland charge for this flockbook service are as follows;

  • €10 per flock (where the flock is a member of LambPlus).
  • €30 per flock (where the flock is not a member of LambPlus).

Sheep Ireland invoices each breed society using the flockbook screens at the end of each calendar year. The invoice is based on the number of active breeders within the breed society as confirmed by the relevant breed society for the given year.

An initial, year one start-up fee of €750 also applies in order to cover the Sheep Ireland administration fees associated with setting up a flockbook. Within the start up year, the annual flockbook fees as outlined earlier in this post will apply.

Services available to breed societies using the Sheep Ireland flockbook management service

  • Online facility to allow members to record their mating data.
  • Online facility to allow all society members to birth notify their lambs.
  • Online facility to all society members to request the pedigree registration of their birth notified lambs.
  • The society secretary has access to a cert approval screen, where animals can be individually approved after all checks are completed – many checks are automatically carried out by the database, for example, both parents must be pedigree themselves, the lamb in question must have been birth notified before the society deadline, etc, etc.
  • An online flockbook search facility for each specific society breed is provided – this can be linked to the breed society website to allow breeders and the general public to search for Pedigree sheep. Contains all Pedigree registered animals for that breed.
  • Flockbook download: This will allow the society representative to download the entire Flockbook into an excel at any point in time. This will display animals that are birth notified, pedigree, registration pending and rejected (for whatever reason).
  • Flockbook Movements: This allows the society to monitor the movements of animals between pedigree flocks.
  • An online catalogue generator function
  • Online Sales entries: Flockbooks can set up sales online which allows society members to enter animals to the sale from their flockbook accounts. The flockbooks can set up sales entries, setting rules specific to the sale entry criteria and allowing only eligible flocks and animals to be entered. The online sales entries minimizes the admin involved in sale organizing and allows for easy catalogue generation.

A nominated person in the society will have access to the flockbook management system and will have full and complete control of all society activities – such as pedigree registrations, cert generation, sales catalogue generation. Sheep Ireland will have no part whatsoever in these activities. Back-up services will be available to users of the system through the Sheep Ireland office during normal office hours on 023 882 0451 or by emailing [email protected].

Online breeder screens

By using the Sheep Ireland flock book screens all breeders in the breed society will have access to their own individual flock accounts. Each breeder will have their own unique username and password to access their flock accounts. A suite of web-screens will be available for the breeder to record all the relevant flock data for the breed society. The following is what is currently available.

  • Flock inventory screen
    • View the ancestry of each sheep
    • View progeny of each animal
    • View the pedigree status of each animal
    • View the mating history of each animal
    • Record the pregnancy scan of animals
    • Record health events on animals such as Lameness, Mastitis, Body Condition Score, Dag score and Prolapse.
  • Lambing screen – record the lambing information for all ewes
  • Health and Weighing screen – record weights and health data for all animals in your flock.
  • Mating screen – record the mating information for all ewes
  • Pregnancy scanning screen – record scanning details on all your ewes.
  • Pedigree management screen – Request the pedigree registration of sheep in your flock
  • Genomic ordering screen – Order genotyping tags or pay for the genomic services of samples in storage.
  • Flock reports
    • Mating Report – View a full summary of all mating’s recorded
    • Inbreeding checker – Run an inbreeding check on all rams/potential purchases to assess the inbreeding risk with each ewe in the flock.
    • Genomic Results – breeders can order DNA sampling kits for animals in their flock and their results will be displayed here. These results will include Parentage Verification, Parentage Predictions, DAFM approved Scrapie type and Genomic Evaluations. The society secretary/registrar will be automatically notified of parentage errors that are corrected via genomic results
    • Weighing reports- breeders can review all weight recordings from a specific calendar year and compare min/max weights and average daily gain figures with previous years weighing reports.
    • Lambing Report- A summary of the flocks lambing season. Easily visualize key figures such as lambing mortality and lambing difficulty for the flock and compare with previous years lambing reports.
    • Ram Report- Using the Ram report you can easily compare how each of the rams performed in your flock. This report details his progenies average performance and allows you to compare sires within the flock in terms of lambing difficulty and weight gain of lambs.
    • Movement report – breeders can view the recent movements of animals in and out of the flock account.

 

Pedigree Cert generation

Breeders can request the pedigree registration of sheep within the flock through their own pedigree request screen. This request is immediately notified to the society administrator, who can then approve or reject the pedigree request. If after doing the relevant checks, the society administrator decides to approve the pedigree registration for a breeder, this will automatically generate a batch of certs ready for printing. These certs will generate as a PDF file, along with a cover page for each individual breeder containing name and address (envelope window ready) with the batch of certs, helping to make posting the certs easier.

The pedigree cert for animals is produced in PDF format and in a format that meets the DAFM regulations. This cert can then be printed onto society specific background paper/cardboard, which can contain the relevant information required by the breed society – breed logos, disclaimers etc.

Example cert

Generating sales catalogues is extremely easy using the Sheep Ireland flock book system. The society administrator simply needs to assemble the list of animals entered for the relevant sale. This list should be assembled on an excel sheet with the animals ID, lot number & breeders comment (if relevant). Once this excel list is assembled a full sales catalogue can be assembled by uploading this excel sheet in csv form to the catalogue generator. Once all animals are on the database this catalogue will generate in a matter of seconds.

A catalogue explanation page and vendor will automatically generate as part of the overall catalogue. The society can if desired apply their own personalised catalogue cover. As the catalogue is generated in PDF format, it can be very easily emailed to a printer or printed by the society administrator.

The sales catalogue will accommodate both LambPlus and non-LambPlus ram breeders. €uroStar values will appear for LambPlus members and will not for non-LambPlus members.

Example catalogue page

Sheep Society’s using the Sheep Ireland database to host their flockbook

Minimum criteria required to avail of the Sheep Ireland flock book management service

A minimum number of 10 active ram breeders will be required to avail of the flock book management service.

A breeding group that operates under this minimum level can of course use the normal LambPlus service indefinitely to capture animal parentage and performance information. All this information will be safely retained on the Sheep Ireland database and will be available to the group if they wish to establish a formal flock book and begin generating pedigree certificates etc at a later date.