Farm journal?

[Jeanne Sheridan]

Hello,

So I’ve been thinking about getting serious about my animals in terms of tracking and planning. So far I keep all information about births, laying records, fertility, issues, interventions, sales and purchases etc. on my smartphone calendar. However my husband has become frustrated with my current system because as our homestead grows my calendar has become more “cluttered”as he calls it. I was thinking about keeping actual logs where all this information can be stored outside of my calendar. I was looking online and there are a few options for farm journals but I wanted some advice from the group as to what you have tried and what you recommend. I could just jot things down in a notebook but I do better with structured formats that cover all bases needed otherwise it will end up a mess. I’m not too tech savvy but if it’s worth it I can give apps and programs a shot. I’m open to keeping multiple logs for different purposes. I just want it to be organized, detailed and easily referenced. Thank you in advance.

I'm a retired Electronics Engineer so doing on paper wasn't even something I considered doing. I set up an Excel spread sheet. The cover page has data on all of out goats that auto feeds from a page that is specific to each goat. If we add pigs, chickens, and cows this year I'll set up separate spread sheets for each.

I don't worry to much about system crashes as I backup all my important documents to a cloud account automatically every night. I also keep copies on a thumb drive. In a wet climate like we have here paper is always risky. A neighbor had all of their data on paper and a roof leak over night dumped buckets of water across their farm desk. I keep my registration documents for my livestock in sealed zip-locks.