How to Start Keeping Cattle Records: A Practical First Week

Start with the people, then the beasts

1. Owners first. Add every owner in the kraal — each with their registered brand (letshwao). In a family herd, every beast will point at one of these owners, so get this list right before anything else.
2. Add your animals. Tag number, sex, colour, and a photo. Don’t stall on what you don’t know — age can be marked unknown and fixed later from the Edit screen. A beast with a photo is a beast you can find again.
3. Photograph as you go. Stand at the crush, work down the race, snap each beast as you register it. The photo becomes the animal’s face in the app — you’ll pick animals by photo forever after.

The habits that make it work

• Record on the day, at the kraal. The app works with no signal and syncs later. A record made a week later is a guess.
• One person can start alone. You don’t need the whole family on board on day one. Add users when they’re ready.
• Use the fix queues. The dashboard shows how many animals are missing a sex, an age, or a photo — work the list down over your visits.

Your first goal is simple: every living beast in the app, with a photo and an owner. Everything else builds on that.

Keep these records without the paperwork

Thuo Tech keeps every animal on record — photos, brands and BAITS tag numbers, treatments and withdrawal periods, weights, breeding, movements and sales — on your computer instead of in a book in a drawer. Built in Botswana, from P100 a month per farm.

Try the whole system free for 14 days — no joining fee. Questions? Email info@thuotech.co.bw or call 72114791.