Set up herds and add buffalo in Farmeter Buff

Every record in a farm app hangs off one thing: the animal it belongs to. A weight on weighing day, a mating date, a pregnancy check, a calving, a reminder: each of them is saved against an animal profile. If that profile is wrong, everything you add later inherits the mistake. A buffalo saved as male can't easily be put into a breeding record as a dam. A calf with no dam can't show up in its mother's history. And when two tags look almost the same, it's easy to save one animal's weight on the other.

That is why this guide is about the boring part, done once. If you set up herds, tag numbers and parents cleanly on the first day in Farmeter Buff, you mostly won't have to touch them again, and the later guides (weights, breeding, reminders) will simply work.

This post assumes you have already installed the app, signed in and registered your farm. If not, start with the getting-started guide. Button names are given as they appear in the app, Thai first with the English label in brackets, because most farmers use the Thai interface.

Rule zero: a tag you can read in the field beats a clever name

In Farmeter Buff, the "หมายเลขแท็ก" (Tag number) is required when you add an animal (along with its sex), and it has to be at least two characters long. The "ชื่อ" (Name) field is optional. That order is a good hint about what matters.

A name like "Grandma's lucky one" is lovely in conversation, but in a muddy pen at six in the morning, the person holding the weighing tape needs to match the animal in front of them to the right profile on the phone. The number on the ear tag is what they can actually read. So:

• Use the number that is physically on the animal. If your buffalo already wear ear tags, type that number exactly as printed.
• Keep one style. If your tags are "0101, 0102…", don't type some as "101" and others as "0101". One style means everyone types the same thing when they search, and the list reads in a sensible order.
• Add the name as well, if you like. The app shows both, and on the buffalo list the tag appears first with the name beside it, as in the screenshot further down.

No tags yet? Next to the tag field there is a button to let the app create a number for you, "สร้างรหัส" (Generate code). It opens a box titled "สร้างหมายเลขแท็ก" (Generate tag number), which explains that the app uses the current year plus a running number, such as 2024001 and 2024002, and that the number won't repeat one that already exists. If you use it, write the same number on the animal's tag so the phone and the field agree.

Step 1: Make the herds first

It's tempting to start adding animals straight away. Make the herds first instead: then every animal has an obvious home the moment you save it.

On the "กระบือ" (Buffalo) tab, tap "เพิ่ม" (Add). A small menu offers two choices: "เพิ่มกระบือ" (Add buffalo) and "เพิ่มฝูง" (Add herd). Choose "เพิ่มฝูง" and give the herd a name.

                              ┌── BREEDING ────────────────────┐
                              │                                │
                            ··│                                │
                          ··                                   │
        ║               ··                                     │
        ║             ··                                       │
        ║────────────·        │                                │
  101                         └───┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴┘
 -████◣                                                         
  ▌  ▐                                      v                   
        ║────────────·        ┌── FATTENING ───────────────────┐
        ║             ·       │                                │
        ║              ··     │                                │
GATE                     ·                                     │
                          ·                                    │
                           ··                                  │
                             ·│                                │
                              └───┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴┘

Name herds by purpose, not by colour or by who looks after them. The app's own example, on the screen where you choose a herd before recording, is a herd of breeding cows (แม่พันธุ์) or a herd of fattening buffalo (กระบือขุน). Purpose-based herds pay off later, because the recording screens let you pick "เลือกฝูงนี้" (Select this herd) and record for the whole group in one go, for example weighing every fattening animal on the same day. Other names that often work well:

• by stage: breeding females, young stock, fattening;
• by pen or paddock, if each pen really does hold one kind of animal (the published screenshot uses pen names such as "คอก F04").

A few things the app handles for you:

• The "No herd" bucket. Animals that aren't in any herd are grouped as "ไม่ระบุฝูง" (Unspecified herd). Nothing is lost there, but it's a sign of an unfinished setup. You can't create a herd with that name yourself; the app keeps it reserved.
• Renaming and deleting. Each herd has a ⋮ menu with "เปลี่ยนชื่อฝูง" (Rename herd) and "ลบฝูง" (Delete herd). Deleting a herd doesn't delete its animals: the app warns that they will move to "ไม่ระบุฝูง".
• Adding straight into a herd. The same ⋮ menu has "เพิ่มกระบือ" (Add buffalo), which is handy when you are filling one herd at a time.

Step 2: Add a buffalo, field by field

Tap "เพิ่ม" (Add), then "เพิ่มกระบือ" (Add buffalo). The form has three steps, and you move through them with "ถัดไป" (Next).

Basic information (ข้อมูลพื้นฐาน)

Check the sex twice. When you later open an animal with "แก้ไขข้อมูลปศุสัตว์" (Edit livestock details), the sex choice is locked. Getting it right on the first save matters more than any other field.

Birth information (ข้อมูลการเกิด)

You can give the birth date in two ways:

• "ระบุวันเกิด" (Specify birth date) if you know the exact day, for example a calf born on your farm.
• "ระบุอายุ" (Specify age) if you don't. Choose an approximate age in years and months, and the app works out a "วันเกิดที่คำนวณได้ (โดยประมาณ)" (Calculated birth date, approx.). For a bought-in adult, an honest estimate is far better than a made-up exact date.

Then come the parents. There are two ways to fill them:

• "กรอกข้อมูลเอง" (Enter manually): pick the sire and dam yourself, either from animals already on your farm, "ในฟาร์ม" (On farm), or from records of animals outside it, "ภายนอกฟาร์ม" (External farm).
• "ใช้บันทึกการผสมพันธุ์" (Use breeding record): for a calf born after you've started using the app, pick the mating you recorded earlier and the app fills in the parents from it.

Don't know a parent? Leave it as "ไม่ระบุ" (Not specified). This is the honest answer, and it's much better than guessing. A guessed sire becomes part of the animal's pedigree, and the app itself warns that changing a sire or dam later affects the pedigree data. You can come back and fill a parent in when you find out.

One more safety net: the app limits which birth dates you can pick based on the sire and dam data, "for accuracy", so the dates stay consistent with the parents' records.

Additional information (ข้อมูลเพิ่มเติม)

Here you set the weaning status (สถานะการหย่านม), the presence status (more on that below), the herd (ฝูงกระบือ), and any notes. If you made your herds in Step 1, this is a single tap.

Finish with "ยืนยันการเพิ่ม" (Confirm add).

Step 3: Parents from outside the farm

Most herds have some history that started elsewhere: a cow bought at a market, a calf sired by a neighbour's bull, or a pregnancy from artificial insemination with bought semen. Farmeter Buff keeps a small register for these, reached from the shortcuts on the home screen: "พ่อพันธุ์" (Sire), "แม่พันธุ์" (Dam) and "น้ำเชื้อ" (Semen).

• "จัดการพ่อพันธุ์" (Manage sires) and "จัดการแม่พันธุ์" (Manage dams): the app describes this as recording sire and dam details from external farms for use when registering offspring. A name is required. The tag number and the source are optional; the app's own example of a source is "a neighbour's farm, livestock market".
• "จัดการน้ำเชื้อ" (Manage semen), then "เพิ่มน้ำเชื้อ" (Add semen): a semen code and the sire it came from are both required.

Do this before you register the offspring. Then, in the add-buffalo form, the outside sire or dam is already in the list under "ภายนอกฟาร์ม" (External farm), and you won't be tempted to leave the parent out.

Step 4: Moving and reorganising later

Herds change. Heifers grow into breeding females, young bulls go to fattening. The app gives you a few tools for this:

• Drag and drop. On the Buffalo management screen, each animal has a drag handle. Drop it on a herd and the app moves it there.
• "ย้ายหลายตัว" (Bulk move), from the button at the top of the screen, for moving a group at once. It runs in three steps: select the buffalo, "เลือกฝูงปลายทาง" (Select destination herd), then set the order within the herd, and finish with "ยืนยันย้าย" (Confirm move). There's also "นำออกจากฝูง" (Remove from herd), which sends animals back to the "No herd" bucket.
• Search. The search box finds an animal by name, tag number or herd name. If your tags follow one style, search is the fastest way to open any animal.

Step 5: Active, inactive and the quota

Buffalo leave the farm: they're sold, they die, sometimes they go missing. Don't delete them. Deleting an animal in Farmeter Buff is permanent, and its history goes with it. Instead, open the animal and change its "สถานะการมีอยู่" (Presence status) from "มีอยู่ในฟาร์ม" (Present on farm) to "ขายแล้ว" (Sold), "ตาย" (Dead) or "สูญหาย" (Missing), with the date and a note.

The app's own help screen, "โควต้ากระบือใช้งาน" (Active buffalo quota), explains why this matters. Sold, dead and missing animals count as inactive, the history of every animal is always kept for viewing, and only active animals count towards your plan's limit of active buffalo.

 ACTIVE [■■■■■] 5/5 FULL                                        
                                                    INACTIVE    
 ┌────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
 │        │        │        │        │        │  │             │
 │  201   │  202   │  203   │  204   │  205   │  │ history kept│
 │ -████◣ │ -████◣ │ -████◣ │ -████◣ │ -████◣ │  │             │
 │  ▌  ▐  │  ▌  ▐  │  ▌  ▐  │  ▌  ▐  │  ▌  ▐  │  │             │
 │        │        │        │        │        │  │             │
                                                 │             │
                                                               │
                                                               │
                                                               │
 ────────────────────────────────────────────────└─────────────┘
                                                                
     ' '                                                        
  ▒▓▒▓▒▒                                                        
 ▓▒▓▒▓▒▓▒   sold / dead / missing = not counted                 
                                                                

What happens as you approach the limit? The Farmeter Buff product page FAQ says the app warns you at 80% of the limit without blocking anything. At 100%, all your existing data stays accessible, but you can't add new active animals or users until you change the plan. Inside the app, the full-quota message suggests two ways forward: upgrade the plan, or change animals that are no longer on the farm to an inactive status to free space. The limits for each plan are listed on the product page; in-app purchases are listed on the App Store and Google Play pages.

Two rules in the app that are worth knowing before you tap:

• If you change a status by mistake, the in-app help says you can change it back up to 3 times a month, as long as there is room left in the quota.
• After 48 hours, the app's status message says a sold, dead or missing status can no longer be changed back to active.

So set the status when the animal actually leaves, and check you picked the right animal first.

Before and after

What a "clean setup" looks like in practice:

The do-it-once checklist

Print this, or keep it open on a second phone, before your first weighing day.

When all ten boxes are ticked, each animal's page looks like the one above: a tag number, a name if you want one, the right sex and age, and parents where they're known. From here on, everything you record lands in the right place. The next guides cover what to record: weights and growth, then breeding through to calving.

Sources

• Farmeter Buff product page and FAQ, Farmeral Technology
• Farmeter Buff on the App Store (Thailand)
• Farmeter Buff on Google Play
• Farmeral Technology