Departures and returns

Departure

The day the animal stopped being on the farm. It is registered from the animal’s record with the "Register departure" button, giving the date, the reason and — optionally — where it went and a note. The record is not deleted: the animal simply stops counting as present and its history stays complete.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Register departure

Departure reason

Why the animal left the farm. It is a single fact, not two: the reason is also the status the animal ends up in. There are six options, and whether the animal can come back depends on which one you pick.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Register departure

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Reason	What it means	Can it come back?
Sale	The animal changed owner and money changed hands.	Yes
Transfer (move)	The animal moved to another establishment with no sale involved: another farm of yours, a loan, grazing elsewhere.	Yes
Death	The animal died. It is a loss the farm suffered.	No
Slaughter	The animal was slaughtered as a management decision, normally for meat.	No
Loss	The animal disappeared: theft, strayed, never turned up again.	Yes
Other	Any departure that does not fit the ones above. Worth explaining it in the note.	Yes

The "Destination" field is free text and optional: it is there to note the name of the farm, the buyer or the slaughterhouse, in your own words. Mi Finca does not interpret it or link it to anything; it is memory for when someone asks, two years from now, where that cow went.

Death and slaughter

Two different departures that often get logged the same way, and should not be. Death is a loss the farm suffered: the animal died and nobody decided it. Slaughter is a management decision: the animal was slaughtered, almost always for meat. Choosing correctly is not paperwork — mortality is a health alarm, and slaughter is a plan.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Register departure

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If both are logged under the same reason, the farm loses the one signal it has for knowing whether animals are dying on it. A farm that slaughters six steers a year is working; a farm where six cows die a year has a problem worth going to look for.

• Death: died calving, died of pneumonia, killed by lightning, found dead in the paddock.
• Slaughter: sent to the slaughterhouse, butchered for the household, culled for age and sent for meat.
• If the animal was put down in an emergency while it was dying, the practical test is the same: there was a decision and the meat was used, so it is a slaughter; the health reason goes in the note.

Neither one allows a return. A dead animal does not come back, and neither does a slaughtered one. If the reason was logged against the wrong animal, that is not fixed with a return but by undoing the departure.

Sale and transfer

The two ways a live animal leaves the farm. In a sale the owner changed and money changed hands. In a transfer the animal moved to another establishment but is still yours: your other farm, a loan to a neighbour, rented grazing. In the app a transfer is labelled "Transfer".Where it appears: Animals → detail → Register departure

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The difference matters because a transfer almost always ends in a return and a sale almost never does. A cow sent out to graze for six months comes back, and those six months explain why she has no weights and no services in that period. A sold cow is no longer the farm’s business.

• Sale: bought by a neighbour, sold at auction, sold to a feedlot.
• Transfer: sent to the family’s other farm, lent out for mating, moved to rented pasture, left with someone else while the corral was repaired.
• Only a transfer allows a return: when the animal comes back, register the return and the record opens again. A sale does not: if the sale fell through or the animal was bought back, register it as a new animal with origin "Purchase". If the sale was logged by mistake, undo the departure instead.

For now, selling an animal to another producer who also uses Mi Finca does not move it automatically to the buyer’s farm: the buyer registers it again on their own, with the same DIIO. Farm-to-farm handover is planned for later.

When the departure reason is "Sold", Mi Finca asks for the buyer, the amount and an optional weight, and records the sale: it shows in Sales (read-only, linked to the record) and in Finance. Undoing the departure annuls the sale with it; to fix the price or the buyer, use "Edit sale" on the record.

Absence

The period the animal was not on the farm: from which day to which day, for what reason and to what destination. It is the real fact behind everything else. An animal can have several absences over its life, but only one open at a time: until the return is registered, no new departure can be registered for it.Where it appears: Animals → detail

Registering a return

The animal genuinely came back. The absence is closed with the date it returned and the animal counts in the herd again, with an editable record. The departure is not deleted: it stays in the history, and it is exactly what explains why there are no weights, services or treatments in those months. It can only be registered after a transfer or a loss: a sold, dead or slaughtered animal does not return.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Register return

Undoing a departure

The departure was logged by mistake — the wrong animal, one click too many — and never happened. Undoing it erases it: nothing is left in the history saying the animal ever left. It is not the same as registering a return, and confusing the two costs information.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Undo departure

See full explanation

Question	Register return	Undo departure
When is it used?	The animal really left and really came back.	The departure was logged by mistake: the animal never left.
What stays in the history?	The departure stays on record, with its leaving date and its return date.	Nothing. The departure is erased as if it had never been written.
What happens to the record?	It opens again and the animal counts in the herd once more.	It opens again too, but with no trace of the departure.

Rule of thumb: if the answer to "where was this cow in March?" is "away", that is a return. If the answer is "here — I just logged it wrong", that is an undo.

Undo works for any reason, death and slaughter included. In fact those are the cases that need it most — a death logged against the wrong cow leaves a cow that is alive in the paddock marked as dead, and only an undo fixes that.

Erase a trip

Corrects a departure and a return that were logged by mistake, when the animal in fact never left the farm. Unlike "Undo departure", which only reaches the currently open departure, this erases any already-closed trip from the absence history: the row disappears and any records that had been blocked for falling inside those dates are accepted again.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Absence history → Erase this trip

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Only available while the animal is on the farm. If it also has an open departure, undo that one first: the record of an animal that is away is fully closed, and that includes its history of already-closed trips.

Like "Undo departure", erasing a trip leaves no trace: nothing stays in the history saying the animal left and came back on those dates.

Closed record

While the animal is away from the farm — for any reason, transferred and lost included — its record is fully closed: everything can be seen, nothing can be changed and nothing can be added. No details, no records, no photos, no genealogy, no medication. Not even records dated before the departure. The only things you can do are register the return or undo the departure, and either one reopens the whole record.Where it appears: Animals → detail (banner at the top and on every tab)

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The rule is simple on purpose. If something was left pending — a weight, a treatment, a photo — enter it before registering the departure. If the departure is already registered, undo it, enter what was pending, and register it again. That way the record of an animal that left never changes quietly.

This includes archiving (deleting) the record: an animal that left cannot be deleted. If the departure was the mistake, undo it first.

Animals hidden from the herd

The animals list shows, by default, only the ones that are on the farm today. Those that left are not deleted: they are hidden. A note under the list says how many animals are hidden, so the herd never looks smaller than it is without an explanation.Where it appears: Animals → list

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Hidden means "outside the default list", never "unreachable". There are three ways to get to an animal that left:

• Tick "Show animals that left the farm" in the list.
• Search for it by name, ear tag or DIIO: any search with text stops hiding the ones that left, because searching is exactly what you do when you know the animal is gone.
• Filter by life status, for example "Sold", to see every animal that left for that reason at once.

The same animals also drop out of the reproduction calendar, the health calendar and the herd indicators. A sold cow cannot calve on the farm, and she used to generate calving alerts that served no purpose.

Parents that are no longer here

A cow sold three years ago still shows up as the mother of her offspring, and a dead bull still shows up as a father. That is deliberate: genealogy is a fact of the past and does not change because the animal is gone. Hiding an animal from the herd list never removes it from its children’s family tree.Where it appears: Animals → detail → Genealogy

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That is why, from a heifer’s record, you can still follow the link to her mother even though the mother is no longer on the farm: you land on her record, closed and complete, with all of her history. The same goes for siblings and for offspring.

The mother’s or father’s DIIO

When the mother or the father were never on this farm — a cow bought already pregnant, semen from a bull at another breeder — there is no record to link to. In that case you write down the parent’s DIIO as text, and the genealogy stays as a reference instead of being lost.Where it appears: Animals → registration form

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On the calf’s record it shows as "DIIO 12345678 (not on this farm)": it is not a link, because there is nowhere to go, but it is the official number the animal can be traced by if it is ever needed.

A DIIO cannot repeat within the same farm. Another producer having an animal with that number does not interfere: national uniqueness of the DIIO is SENASA’s job, not Mi Finca’s.

Dates and presence

While the animal is away nothing can be added, whatever the date: not even a record dated from when it was still here (see "Closed record"). When the animal is on the farm, no record can be dated on a day it was not here. Entering last month’s treatment today, back when the cow was here, is normal and allowed; dating one into the months she spent on another farm before coming back is not.Where it appears: Health, Weight, Body condition, Reproduction

See full explanation

There are two rules, in this order. First: if the animal is away, the record is closed and nothing goes in — enter what is pending before the departure, or undo the departure, enter it, and register it again. Second: if the animal is here, weights, body condition, health events, protocols applied with an explicit date, breeding services and reproductive events — both when creating them and when changing their date afterwards — must be dated on a day it was on the farm.

• The day of departure counts as present: the cow sold on the 1st was weighed that same morning at loading, and that weight is legitimate.
• The day of return counts as present too, for the same reason.
• The days in between do not: on those dates the animal was not here and there is nothing to record.
• Nothing can be dated before the animal’s entry date either, or in the future.

The rule also works the other way round: a departure cannot be registered with a date earlier than the animal’s most recent record. If the cow has a weight from the 20th and you sell her dated the 10th, the app asks for a more recent date — otherwise that weight would sit on a day when, as far as the system is concerned, she was already gone.

Departure and return

1. 1

   On the farm

   Counts in the herd and can take new records

2. 2

   Departure

   Date, reason and destination — buyer and amount when sold — the record closes

3. 3

   Away

   Hidden from the list, reachable from search and from its offspring

4. 4

   Return

   The absence is closed with a date and stays as history

Correcting a departure logged by mistake

1. 1

   The error shows up

   The animal never left, or a different one did

2. 2

   Open the record

   Find the animal by name, ear tag or DIIO

3. 3

   Undo departure

   Confirm that the departure is erased without a trace

4. 4

   Record open

   The animal is back in the herd and editable