Blog · Farming

Herd records for a goat or pig farm: breeding, due dates and health

26 October 2026 · 5 min read

A goat or pig farm doesn't run a delivery round. It sells at the gate, to a trader or at the market. What it does need is a herd book that knows which animal was served when, when she is due, and which one can't be sold yet because she was treated last week.

What to record, whatever you raise

• Each animal, once. A tag or a name, the species, female or male, and where she came from. These are facts about the animal, not about a date, so they belong on her card rather than in the day's notes.
• Service and result. The day she was served, then pregnant, empty, aborted or delivered. The due date follows from the service date, but only if it is counted with the right species' gestation.
• Health, with the next date. Vaccinations, deworming, treatments and check-ups. Each one with the date the next is due, so the reminder doesn't depend on someone's memory.
• Meat withdrawal. After a treatment, the date the animal can safely be sold for meat. This is the date that matters most on a farm that sells animals, and the one most often lost in a notebook.

Goats and sheep

Many small farms keep goats and sheep together, so the herd book should take both without a second set of records. Their gestations are close but not the same: a goat carries about 150 days, a ewe a few days less, about 147.

The vaccines that come up most for goats and sheep are PPR (peste des petits ruminants), ET (enterotoxaemia) and FMD. Your vet decides the schedule for your area and your flock; the herd book's job is to remember what was given and when the next one is due.

What a goat farm sells is usually mutton by the kilo and kids or lambs by the head, so those are the two things worth counting sales against.

Pigs

A sow carries for three months, three weeks and three days: about 114 days. It is short enough that a farm with a few sows has a farrowing every few weeks, and a due date missed by even a week is a litter nobody was ready for.

For pigs, CSF (classical swine fever) and FMD are the vaccines most farms keep track of. As with goats, follow your vet's schedule; the record is what keeps it from slipping.

A pig farm sells pork by the kilo and piglets by the head.

What SmallFarm.app does, and doesn't yet

SmallFarm.app started as a dairy's delivery app, and a goat or pig farm gets a different starting point:

• No delivery book by default. A farm that doesn't deliver doesn't need a "Today" screen full of stops. Deliveries can be turned on for a farm that also delivers.
• The herd book with your species. A goat farm keeps goats and sheep, a pig farm keeps pigs, and every due date counts off that species' gestation.
• Your vaccines first. The health record offers PPR, ET and FMD to a goat farm, and CSF and FMD to a pig farm, and anything else can be typed. After a treatment it records the meat withdrawal date.
• Starter products. Mutton and lamb or kid for a goat farm, pork and piglets for a pig farm, ready for the sales records that come next. It doesn't keep sales accounts yet.
• It works in English and twelve Indian languages.

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