Pens — manage physical animal locations

What this page helps you do

A pen is a physical place where animals are housed, such as a barn pen, paddock or calving shed. It is different from an Animal group, which is a working collection of animals. From Admin → Farms → select farm → Pens, create and maintain the farm’s locations. Check the selected farm first: pens belong to one farm, their names are unique within that farm, and feed plans can target a pen.

Use this page to answer three practical questions: which physical locations exist, how many active animals currently point to each location, and which ration is planned for a location today. Creating a pen does not place animals in it. Assign or move animals separately from the animal record or a reviewed animal selection.

Create a pen

Select Add Pen on the farm detail page. The Create Pen slide-over has three controls:

Control	What to enter
Pen Name	Required, 1–100 characters. Use a name staff can recognise when assigning animals. An exact duplicate name on the same farm is rejected. Leading and trailing spaces are removed when the pen is saved.
Capacity	Optional whole number of places, at least 1 when entered. Leave blank if no fixed capacity is recorded.
Notes	Optional, up to 500 characters; describe location or practical conditions, not an animal’s clinical record.

Select Create Pen to save, or Cancel to close without creating it. Validation messages appear below the affected field; a server rejection appears above the form. Creation requires farm animal-management permission, normally Owner or Manager. Creating a pen does not move any animals into it, create a feed plan or record a feeding event.

Open the pen and check occupancy

Select a pen’s name from the farm detail list. The pen page shows Name, Capacity, Current occupancy, Notes and Status. Occupancy counts active animals whose current pen is this pen. If Capacity is set, Farmlync shows occupancy as a count out of capacity. An Inactive badge means the saved pen record is inactive; the current page does not provide an activate/deactivate control. Back to Farm returns to the farm detail.

If the organisation has the Feed feature, Current feed plan shows the ration name, optional description, effective date range and notes for the active plan as of the farm’s local today. No active feed plan for this pen means the lookup found none for that date; an error has its own Retry control. Where permitted, Create Plan opens the farm’s Feed Plans page. A displayed plan is information, not proof that feed was given; Feeding Events records actual feeding.

Move animals to a pen

Use Assign Pen on one active animal, or select animals in the Animals list or animal-selection window and choose Assign Pen for a batch. This changes physical housing. It does not add or remove logical group memberships and it does not record feeding.

One animal

Control	What to enter or check
Destination pen *	Search and select a pen configured on the current farm. The picker loads up to 50 matches at a time, so type part of the pen name when needed. A deleted or different-farm pen is refused.
Reason (optional)	Brief operational reason, up to 200 characters. This is stored with the movement history.
Assign	Records the move and updates the animal’s current pen. Choosing the pen the animal already occupies is accepted as a no-op and does not add another movement.
Cancel	Closes without moving the animal.

The current web form does not ask for a move date and does not offer a No pen destination. It records the movement when you save it. The service supports an approved correction or integration supplying a farm-local moved-on date, but typing a date into Reason does not backdate the record. Use the approved correction/import path when an earlier physical move must be represented accurately for pen history or feed-cost attribution.

Farmlync records the previous pen, destination pen, farm, reason and user in animal movement history and adds a Transfer event to the animal timeline. Reopen the animal and the destination pen after saving to verify the current location and occupancy.

Several animals

Build and review a selection, then choose Assign Pen. One batch supports 1–100 distinct animals. If more than 100 are selected, the panel warns you and disables submission until the selection is reduced.

Control	What to enter or check
Selected count	Read-only count in the panel heading. Return to the selection window if it includes the wrong animals.
Destination pen *	One current-farm pen applied to every selected animal.
Reason (optional)	Shared reason, up to 200 characters. Blank reasons are recorded as “Bulk pen assignment” in movement history.
Assign n Animal(s)	Records a movement for each animal whose current pen differs from the destination. An animal already in that pen counts as successful without another movement.
Cancel	Closes without moving the selection.

The normal selection workflow submits only animals the latest server capability check marks eligible and includes the record version captured for each animal. A batch can partially succeed when a selected animal changed before submission or is no longer found in the farm. The current result toast gives success and failure counts, but it does not display the returned animal-by-animal error list. If any fail, refresh the Animals list and compare current pens before selecting only the animals that still need to move; successful animals have already changed.

Only Owners and Managers with animal-management authority can save pen assignments. The single-animal action refuses an animal that is no longer Active, and the normal batch-selection workflow excludes ineligible animals before opening the form. Start from the active-animal list and never use pen assignment to represent a sale, cull, death or other departure.

Edit or delete

Select Edit beside a pen on farm detail, or Edit Pen on its page. The form uses the same Pen Name, Capacity and Notes limits as creation. Save Changes updates the pen; Cancel leaves it unchanged. Changing the name does not itself move animals, and changing Capacity does not remove animals or prevent later assignments. Reopen the pen to check its updated overview.

Delete is on the farm-detail pen row and asks Delete pen “<name>”? for confirmation. The current command soft-deletes the pen even when occupancy is above zero; it does not automatically reassign animals whose saved pen ID points to it. Before deleting an occupied pen, move those animals to another valid pen and check their details afterward. A deleted pen can otherwise appear as a missing/deleted location when reviewing those animals. Deletion requires Owner or Manager authority. If deletion fails, the current page reports only Failed to delete pen; retry after checking the pen and your access. If you only need to correct a pen’s name or capacity, use Edit rather than Delete.