Farm livestock settings — breeding and lifecycle defaults

What this page helps you do

From Admin → Farms → select farm → Livestock Settings, or Farm portal → Manage → Livestock settings, set how this particular farm plans breeding, calf transitions and, on Dairy or Mixed farms, the dry period and lactation. These are farm overrides of organisation settings: an empty numeric field inherits the displayed organisation default, except where the page explicitly says there is no organisation default. Do not fill every box just to repeat that default. Check the farm name before saving because the settings affect future worklists, readiness decisions, projections and performance interpretation for that farm.

The page loads existing overrides into the form. An inherited value appears below the field as Inherits tenant default; the textbox stays blank. Save settings replaces the complete farm override set, using blank to clear an override. A success toast confirms the save and refreshes related breeding work surfaces. If the farm settings fail to load, use Retry and do not save the empty-looking form. If several inheritance hints unexpectedly say No tenant default, refresh and confirm that organisation settings loaded before editing. In a read-only support visit, the form is disabled and there is no save button.

Farm Owners, Managers and Vets have the Record breeding events permission used by this save. Tenant and Platform Administrators can act across their authorised farm scope. Workers can view the configuration when they have dashboard access but cannot save it; a direct save is rejected by the server.

Reproduction and lifecycle

Field	Accepted farm override	What it controls
Voluntary waiting period (days)	0–120 days	Earliest planned time after calving for an unserved cow to leave the waiting-period bucket and become ready for breeding review.
Gestation length (days)	200–400 days	Estimated pregnancy length used to derive expected-calving dates and calving windows where no recorded date is available.
Heat interval (days)	15–30 days	Expected oestrus interval used by the current worklist and cycle-grid classification.
Days-open threshold (days)	30–365 days	Point at which an open cow is highlighted for prolonged days open.
Services per conception	1–10	Threshold used to identify repeat-service or repeat-breeder attention.
Target conception rate (%)	1–100 percent	Farm benchmark used when comparing reproductive performance.
Lifecycle: calf → heifer (months)	1–24 months	Default age for lifecycle planning to move a calf into the heifer stage.
Minimum breeding age (days)	180–900 days	Maiden-heifer service and readiness gate. It is separate from the calf-to-heifer lifecycle age and falls back to the built-in 365-day value, not an organisation field.
Target breeding weight (kg, optional)	100–1,000 kg	Optional maiden-heifer readiness gate. When set, Farmlync requires weight evidence and compares the latest recorded weight with this target; leave blank to disable the weight gate.

Use whole-day or whole-month values for fields labelled in days or months. A blank means inherit or, where no higher-level value exists, use the application’s effective default. It does not mean zero. Zero is allowed only where the accepted range above begins at zero. Check the resulting worklists or projections after changing a timing rule; this configuration is not a historical breeding-event correction.

Dairy and calving season

Dairy appears only for Dairy or Mixed farms. Dry period (days) accepts 0–120 and affects dry-off planning before expected calving. Lactation length (days) accepts 100–500 and supplies the farm’s planned lactation length. Both blank values inherit the corresponding organisation setting. On a Beef-only farm the page does not show these controls and a save clears any dairy override from the request.

Under Calving pattern & season, choose Year-round, Spring Calving, Autumn Calving or Split Calving, or leave the dropdown unselected to inherit the organisation’s pattern. Breeding season start and Breeding season end are optional farm-local dates; they have no organisation default in this form. You may store either boundary alone. If both dates are entered, the end must be after the start. These dates define the farm’s seasonal reporting window; they do not record a service or pregnancy check. For the resulting report, see Seasonal breeding report.

If the save is rejected, read the message, correct values outside the accepted ranges, a reversed season window or an authority failure, and save again. Confirm the success toast before leaving, then reopen the page or inspect the affected worklist when the planning change is important. This settings record currently has no visible version/conflict prompt, so coordinate changes when more than one authorised person is configuring the same farm. For the broader setup sequence, use Configure organisation and farm defaults.