The filter toolbar is displayed directly under the Favourites Toolbar and provides you with options on how you can filter the cows that are displayed on your screen in your Cow List.

 

 

 

Clicking in the large white box next to ID and typing in a cow number will move the record pointer to that particular cow.

Clicking on the drop down arrow next to “Search on” will allow you to search your cow list by a number of different fields.  Just click on the field you wish to search by.

Removing the tick from the box next to Herd will display cows from any herds that are contained on your database.  With this box ticked only cows from the herd appearing in the “Herd” box will be displayed.

Clicking on the drop down arrow next to Herd will enable you to display the cows in the herd number you choose.

Clicking the drop down arrow next to Herd Group will enable you to filter your Cow List to only display those cows in the Herd Group you choose.

Clicking the drop down arrow next to category will enable you to filter your Cow List to only display those cows in the category you choose.

The No: is the number of cows currently displayed in the Cow List.

The Filter Toolbar changes depending which part of MISTRO Farm 5 is currently open.  If your Bull List is open the Filter Toolbar will look like this:

 

There are options in this Filter Toolbar for filtering by “Search bulls on”, “Herd”, “Just herd bulls” tickbox, and “Bull Category”.

There are also other filters within the program based on whichever area you have currently open.  All of these Filter Toolbars work in much the same way as the ones described above.

 

Nominating which herd you wish to use.

Many herds contain cows that have their mothers or grandmothers located in other herds. One of MISTRO Farm 5’s main tasks is to maintain pedigree information for all cows in your herd. To do this, it must maintain records for these animals in other herds. For this reason, there will usually be more than one herd identifier loaded into your database.

Most of the time, you will only be interested in the cows within one herd, and this is identified by your herd’s code or number. When you open the “Females” view, the herd mask should be set to your herd’s identity. If it is not, you should nominate your preferred herd ID using the Setup utility (see page Error! Bookmark not defined.).

You can select an alternative herd to work with in two ways. You can type the ID you require into the herd mask box, or you can click on the small arrow to the right of the box to display a list of herds currently loaded on the system. Then click on the herd ID you wish to use. This will be an important task for operators who wish to maintain records of two herds on their system.

In some circumstances you may wish to view all the females loaded on your database. In this situation, you should clear the herd mask by clicking in the box and then pressing the delete button to clear the field. This will remove any limit to a particular herd ID.

 

Deciding on a search field (Search on)

Most operators use the herd recording number of the cow to identify individual animals. MISTRO will select the Recording # as the preferred identifier to work with. If you wish to use another type of identifier, click the arrow at the right of the Search on box to reveal a list of options. You may locate an animal using any of the following identifiers.

·         Herd recording number – eg 1926

·         A preferred identity or short name – eg 926 or DAISY

·         Registered name – eg GLENTHOMSON DAISY III

·         National ID – eg The Australian national ID of 29901234

·         Other ID – eg an old freeze brand

·         Electronic ID – the transponder number for the cow.

·         Herd book number – the stud’s herd book identification number

·         NLIS ID – the number on the NLIS tag eg 3WLFA003ABC00341

 

Limiting your search to particular groups of animals (Scope)

You can reduce the chance of making data entry errors by limiting the scope of animals you wish to work with. For example, if you are drying cows off, you will not be interested in anything but the milking herd. You will therefore reduce the possibility for errors if you limit the scope of data entry to just the milking cows.

Setting the scope appropriately also makes it much easier to check information on a particular group of cows.

The program selects Current when you first open it. You can modify the selected scope by clicking on the small arrow to the right of the Scope box. This will reveal a range of options that includes:

Current  All females that are currently alive and running in your herd. Animals that have been sold or transferred to other herds are excluded from current operations. This is the option that is usually used when you are looking up information on individual cows.

Milkers   All females that are currently in milk. This option should be selected when you are entering information where only milkers need to be considered. For example, when drying off or selling cull cows directly from the herd.

Dries       All adult cows (have milked for at least one lactation) that are currently dry. You would select this scope when entering treatments that are used during the dry period.

Dries & Milkers       

View all the current adult cows in the herd, whether milking or dry. This is useful when you want to check total numbers during the later part of the season when some cows are milking and some are dry.

Dries & Heifers       

Adult dry cows and heifers that are more than 14 months of age. You would select this scope when entering calving dates. These are the animals that can potentially calve in the next 12 months.

Yet to calve  All animals that have never yet calved.

Not on heat  All cows with a calving date that have not yet been detected on heat. You would select this scope when checking what treatments have been given to your non-cycling cows.

Due on heat All cows with a heat/service recorded 18-24 days previously.

Not served    All cows with a calving date that have not yet been served.

Due to calve All cows that are due to calve based on a positive pregnancy diagnosis or a non return to heat following a recorded service.

Calves, heifers, 2 year olds, 3 year olds, 4 year olds, Mature        

Animals in each age classification. Note that calves become heifers at 14 months of age. This means, that 14-15 months after the start of calving, you might find some calves have moved to the next agegroup, while others have not.

All animals   

Don’t restrict the scope of the search to any particular type of animal. Dead and sold cows and cows that have been transferred to other herds will be included in the search.

Terminated   Restrict your search to animals that have been terminated.

To register    Restrict your search to animals that have no herd book number recorded. This can be used to track calves that have not been registered with a breed society.

A very useful feature of using the scope field is to obtain a quick count of the animals in a particular group. For example, if you nominate the required herd number, and set the scope to 2 year olds, the matching animals will be extracted and the number in the group will be displayed to the right of the Filter Toolbar.