Move ruminants

This activity is used to move individuals around a farm/property. Moving individuals can require labour resources. Once moved, animals are identified by the pasture they are present within, and will consume the pasture during the Graze ruminants activity. By using Timers you can provide Move activities to perform rotational grazing or move individuals for breeding or based on the pasture biomass or quality.

Individuals are assumed to be in the general property or yards until moved and have the location "Unspecified - general yards".

The following parameters are used to define this activity

Pasture

The pasture represented by a Graze food store type is a managed paddock or field where individuals can be placed.

This entry is a drop down list of available Graze food store type resources of the Graze food store available for this simulation

An option to move to "Unspecified - general yards" is also available. This would be used to move animals back to the house or yards for part of the year. It is important to realise that animals in the general yards will not graze and must be fed using Feed ruminants activities.

Perform at start of simulation

This switch will place the selected individuals in the desired paddock at the start of the simulation. No labour is used for this option.

Move sucklings with mother

This parameter determines whether sucklings are moved with their mother regardless of whether they are contained in the ruminant filter criteria. Sucklings separated from mothers will have reduced intake as no milk is available. These individuals will start to include a potential intake of other feed such as grazed pasture (based on 2% of body weight if pasture is available), but must have appropriate activities available. Sucklings can be subsequently removed from their mother if a later move activity selects them.

Insufficient resources available action

This parameter will determine what action is taken if there are insufficient resources to perform this activity.

You can report an error and stop the simulation, skip this activity or use the resources available. See What to do when resources are limiting

The following components will add additional functionality to this activity

Labour Requirement

Adding a Labour requirement below this activity will mean that labour is calculated and required to undertake the task.

Timers

This activity will occur in every time-step unless timers are used to restrict this activity (see Using timers).

Ruminant Activity group

This activity will obey all Ruminant activity group in the simulation tree at and above it's location.

Only one instance of this component is permitted in each Activity.

All individuals of the current herd considering any filter groups above the activity will be moved.

Individuals to move

This task will be performed on individuals meeting the following filter rules

Not at move to location

You can further customise this selection by adding Ruminant groups with the identifier Individuals to move

The individuals moved will be assigned the name of the pasture they are moved to in their Location property which can be accessed during filtering.

This activity is performed in the same general event (CLEMGetResourcesRequired, see Events) as the majority of activities. This means the placement of this activity in the simulation tree will be important. Placing this activity above any Graze ruminants activity will ensure the animals have been placed on the specified pasture before they graze. Likewise, placing the activity after the Graze ruminants activity will result in movement happening after grazing. This even allows you to move the animals to the yards before grazing with one activity and move them back to pasture after grazing (skipped) and herd management to represent a muster. You will realise that in this month time-step you would have to hand feed the animals as they did not graze.

This is performed after breeding and pasture production.

This activity will take place along side other ruminant activities such as graze and feed to ensure labour is considered and animals can be in position relative to these other feeding activities and ready for any management, marking for sale, buying and selling.

The following status values apply to this activity and are shown in Activities performed report:

	blank	The activity was not considered in this time-step
	not needed	No moving was required
	success	Individuals were moved