Bulk beef intake — register an arriving load

What this page helps you do

Bulk intake registers several purchased cattle from one arrival without repeating the same consignment details for every animal. It creates animal records and farm-entry history. If you supply arrival weights, it also records them as the animals’ first weighing session, so later growth calculations have an anchor. An uploaded CSV fills the editable grid; it does not register the animals until you review and submit it.

Open Livestock → Beef → Bulk intake on a Beef or Mixed farm. This page shows a Beef feature notice instead of the form on a dairy-only farm. A customer Farm Owner or Manager can register the load; other roles can currently reach the form but the save is refused. Have the arrival sheet, identifiers, birth dates and measured arrival weights ready. If a breed you need is missing, arrange for it to be available in the farm’s breed catalog first.

One submission can contain at most 1,000 tag-bearing animals. Split a larger consignment into reviewed batches before registering it.

Complete the load details

Control	What to enter
Entry / arrival date	Required date the animals entered this farm. It starts at today in the farm’s timezone; the date picker does not allow a future date. A row’s birth date must not be later than this date.
Purchase source	Optional source, such as a mart or seller, up to 200 characters. It is saved with the purchased entry and farm movement.
Default Breed	Pick a breed available to this farm. New rows inherit it; the saved row still needs a breed.
Default Sex	Select the common sex for new rows. It also limits which stage choices make sense.
Default Birth date	Use only when all relevant animals really share this date. Every submitted row needs a birth date.
Default Current stage	Leave blank for automatic age/sex resolution, or choose a known stage such as Calf, Weaner, Stocker, Finisher, Cow or Bull. Stage choices are narrowed by sex.
Apply to blank cells	Copies the current defaults into empty breed, sex, birth-date and stage cells of rows already on screen. It does not overwrite non-empty cells, prices, tags, national IDs or weights.

Changing a default after rows already exist does not automatically rewrite those rows. Use Apply to blank cells, then inspect each animal, especially when a load contains different birth dates or breeds.

Check each animal row

Use Add row or + 5 rows to make blank entries. Remove row deletes a draft row before submission; it does not delete a registered animal. The grid counts rows with a tag, and only those tag-bearing rows are submitted.

Column	Meaning and validation
Tag	Required farm visual tag, up to 50 characters. Farmlync trims it, converts it to uppercase and checks it case-insensitively. It must be unique both in this load and among existing farm animals.
Breed	Required farm-catalog breed. Selecting it carries the catalog code with the saved animal.
Sex	Required. Use the actual sex; this affects valid lifecycle stages.
Birth date	Required date, no later than arrival. An unknown date needs to be resolved before registration. Birth weight is not required for purchased cattle.
National ID	Required when this farm’s registry setting requires one; otherwise optional. Use at most 100 characters. Farmlync removes spaces and hyphens and converts it to uppercase before matching. It must be unique within the enforced identifier scope. Use the tag-pool picker beside the field if a reserved identifier applies.
Current stage	Optional when automatic stage resolution is appropriate. A selected stage must be valid for the animal’s sex and age. Check Stocker/Finisher and adult stages against source records.
Price	Optional purchase price in the organisation’s displayed currency, from 0.00 upward, with no more than two decimal places. This is an animal acquisition cost, not an eventual sale price.
Arrival wt (kg)	Optional measured weight from 0.1 to 9,999.9 kg. Saved arrival weights create a Scale weighing session dated to the load’s entry, with Arrival weight recorded as its note.

Fill the grid from CSV

Select Import CSV to load a local CSV into the grid. The importer ignores heading case, spaces and underscores. It recognises tag headings such as tag, tagNumber, visualTag and earTag; it also reads breed, sex, birth date, national ID, price, arrival weight and stage headings. Dates may use yyyy-MM-dd, dd/MM/yyyy or dd-MM-yyyy; slash/dash dates are interpreted day-first. Sex aliases include M/Male/Bull, F/Female/Heifer/Cow and Steer/Bullock. It skips rows without a tag. An upload with no tagged rows shows an error. Uploading a new CSV replaces the current draft grid, so save any unsent work elsewhere first. Defaults fill missing values in the imported rows but do not override supplied cells.

Check numeric CSV cells particularly carefully. The current browser conversion can turn unrecognised price or weight text into an empty value instead of displaying a row error.

The success message after upload means the rows were loaded for review, not registered. Scan the grid for incorrect date interpretation, sex, breed, price, stage and identifier before selecting Register intake.

Register and verify

Select Register intake (number) when all tag-bearing rows are ready. The form checks required national IDs up front where the farm requires them. The server checks the rest of the load, including duplicate tags/IDs, catalog breeds, sex, dates, non-negative prices and valid stages. A row error rejects the whole registration load; nothing is registered. A batch-level error such as exceeding 1,000 animals currently appears only as the general rejection message rather than beside a row. Correct the batch or highlighted rows and submit again rather than creating a second load.

After success, the message reports animals registered and, if applicable, animals weighed. Search several submitted tags in Animals list and check their purchased entry, identity and initial stage. Check Weight sessions for the arrival weighing when you supplied weights. Pen assignment is not part of this grid; arrange it afterwards through the animal/farm workflow when needed.