How do I input animals that leave the farm very quickly such as meat calves?
Here are some tips on entering animals that leave the farm quickly:
- You should always enter the average annual numbers of animals on the farm e.g. if you have 24 calves that only stay for 2 weeks then you need to enter 1 animal on average across the year.
- Any animals leaving the dairy system, no matter how soon should always be added into sold animals.
- For calves specifically, dairy cows spend energy for growing calves. You always need to put calves into sold so that some of the dairy cows emissions can be allocated towards producing that beef calf - otherwise you may overestimate your dairy emissions.
- Any calves that go to the beef system need to be entered as purchased calves in your beef assessment. This is also the case for if you have a beef and dairy system on the same farm.
- For any time animals are on the farm, you always need to enter the manure management and any feed given. If calves are fed only their mothers milk, this cannot currently be added into an assessment so the feed section can be left blank.