We are now in the lull between batches of lambs. We had nine ewes left to go, but we’re down to eight now.

My focus is shifting to working on the desktop and cleaning up the mobile application.

Bug fixing of the Lambing module is going well. A few things took a bit of time to correct, but it’s all working as expected now. I do keep a running log on Twitter of most of the work on LambTracker®, as well as our farm status. I’ve added a follow button in case anyone wants a running commentary.

Just finished a major change to the database structure. We’ve always had a few static concepts in the system. Alerts are things that you want to check next time you work on the sheep. Notes are things that stay with the sheep record for life, but don’t really fit into any other table. Evaluations are ranking, scoring, and measuring tests for the sheep.

Last week, we had the first field trial of the shearing and sheep management modules. We learned several things that we’ll incorporate into LambTracker® now.

We’ve been very busy with LambTracker® development and use. After the ewes were inseminated, we waited a bit, then started doing ultrasounds. We have a relatively inexpensive ultrasound machine, but we’re not skilled in determining pregnancy yet.

We’ve just finished the major portion of this year’s USDA experiment on non-surgical AI in sheep. On December 3rd, we inseminated 24 ewes with either fresh-cooled or frozen semen. During the run-up to the insemination date, we used LambTracker and a new module, EvaluateSheep2, to collect the date and time when each ewe had her sponge or CIDR inserted, the PMSG given, and the removal date of the sponge or CIDR.