Attribute individuals

Managing a farm may require that you can mark individuals so that they can be identified for special treatment (e.g. draught bull). The Mark ruminants for sale and Manage ruminant tag activities both allow us to achieve this functionality, with the second method now using an Attribute and this approach now applying to people (Labour resource), ruminants and other animals.

An Attribute is a tag or label that can be applied to any individuals in the population. This allows us to remember this tag and identify the tagged individuals when filtering and sorting so that we can perform activities on these individuals, or value these individual separately (see pricing).

The Attribute approach also allows us to have an associated value with the tag. This allows you to add custom properties to the individuals in the simulation which can also be included in filtering and sorting. One example of this now being used, is to have a genetic index tag and associated genetic index value for every individual in the herd, and those coming into the herd. This allows the herd genetics to be tracked with Attribute inheritance also able to be set and handled during breeding.

The tools to apply attributes are currently being developed and include the Set attribute with value component that can be placed below a Ruminant initial cohort, Ruminant initial cohorts and Controlled mating activity. Manage ruminant tag activity will soon include the ability to specify the value of the attribute.

Attributes are now being used automatically in the model. For example, when you set up labour (people) and there is more than one person (number) set in a cohort (Labour type) the naming of the dynamically created individuals uses a combination of the labour type name and the index of the new individual in the list. This means you were not able to identify all the individuals in this group together. Now as this group are created, each individual also get an Attribute applied with the tag equal to the name of the Labour Type name allowing them to be managed as a group.