Aussie Finch Forum

Yeah!!!

bleeding green wrote:Hey Natamambo, I've been trying out BEP. It seems good once you get used to it. I've set up the seasons and that works well. However when I go to the pairs>egg>option and select 'add multiple eggs for the selected pair' it doesn't add them to the current season. For me it was adding them to another season in my season list. So I tried deleting that season and all the data in it. Try to ad multiple eggs in one go again and even though it says that they were successfully added I can't see where they go.
However I can add the eggs individually and add them to a current clutch and that all seems to be working fine.
Also, I haven't got that far yet but when you see a 'descendants' option does it show all descendants for all seasons or just the descendants for the current season?

I think this type of software can work really well for breeding a large number of pairs from the same species. It's a bit too involved for those who might breed 1 or 2 pairs only of the same species.

I only have 3 pairs of gouldians at the moment but I want to make sure that any offspring are tracked genetically from the get go as I chanced upon a bird at a dealer a bird that does not fit **any** of the known mutation phenotypes and while it may just be abnormally coloured for some as yet unknown genetic reason I have deliberately established enough pairs to create the required genetics colony from those pairs to experiment with in succeeding years.

I haven't tested extensively subsequent years as yet, I'll answer what I can:

* I haven't before tried to add multiple eggs at all, adding single eggs works fine as you say. So I just tried and it worked fine for me. Process: Go to new season (spring). Create new pair. Add multiple egg clutch, make sure the date laid is within date range of that season (I used a random day in Sept 11). They all appear and remain visible only to that breeding season. perhaps you did not have a laid date inside the season parameters? The first time I tried I didn't change the date and they disappeared however when I changed the season to the default season (99 years) they appeared and I could delete the "missing" eggs.

* I have for the sake of answering your question created a fake pair and given it offspring in Spring 2011 and Summer 2012 breeding seasons (including using multiple clutch again to test my theory and it seems your issue is date related) and then checked the offspring. It's a database listing and is not limited to season, it simply lists all records that match the search criteria.

I have found some flaws which disappoint me but it may still be the best of the bunch:

* It doesn't calculate the genetics of the young, you still have to work that out and add it yourself. I was hoping it would record that for you.

* The reports are just print to screen jpegs that automatically open in Windows print assistant thingy, zoo easy leaves it for dead in this area.

* If you pair brother and sister in the "test the amount of inbreeding" it says the inbreeding ratio is 25%, my lecturers would have said 50% (given that apart from sex chromosomes they got one each chromosome from each parent and therefore it can't be 100%). It gives the same 25% if you pair mother / son or father / daughter yet it correctly states two related birds in history not 1. This makes me wonder what would happen if you got it to calculate cousins but I can't be bothered trying right now.

Positves:

* The "relationships" area is very strong and would help identify rapidly possible sources of unexpected offspring.

* You can have separate identifiers and leg rings, and the identifier is a changeable field. Zoo easy requires you to create a non changeable identifier ("Ring No") as soon as you create the bird as an offspring which means if you use numbered rings you can't add the egg until you have rung the young (or at least set aside a numbered ring ready).

* It allows for the tracking of eggs, Zoo easy has no concept of eggs only offspring. Having eggs is useful for tracking dud studs!

Overall I suspect Breeders Assistant for Birds would be the ants pants after some major ground work was done. It's genetics module and reporting is second to none. But there is no pre-loaded or supplied genetics mapping for gouldians and I got some of it working (with hours of work) and only scratched the surface, gouldian genetics being what they are, and I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I'd be happy to make it a major project of my spare time I there as some gain or enough other breeders thought they'd use it afterwards and tipped in to the kitty but it's a chicken and egg argument, no one will agree to give me some pocket money if they aren't able to know what they are getting.

Natamambo, you are correct re: the dates of my seasons effecting where the eggs go. I thought I had the current season for the lovebirds at 01/01/2011 but in fact it was 01/02/2011, so when I was adding the eggs as laid in january, they were out of that season and it put them into a current season.

Also, I agree with the printing of the ancestary, but it does show a family tree which I think is good enough.

I notcied the differance with the bird identifier between ZE and BEP also. With BEP{ you can make any changes and they are correctly transfered across the data base which is great. It means you can list a chick as hatched then later add the ring number and colour etc.

What I don't like is that every bird has to have a differant name in the identifier. This 'could' become messy unless I develop a system for naming each bird and stay ontop of it. ATM I know my birds as; the one I bought from the club show, that's the one I kept when I moved, That's the young from the pair I kept when I moved etc. Cleary this isn't going to work and with more birds the need for a better system is evident. Hence why I began looking for some decent software to begin with. I guess BEP has the potential, it's up to me to use it to suit me.

I'm not that concerned about a genetics predictor. It would be a cool tool but not nessary.

Bleeding Green, BEP has a genetic predictor and it works fine. Breeders Assistant for Birds will automatically calculate the genotype for the offspring that are hatched, BEP requires you to know and then add it yourself to the hatched young, that's the distinction I was making. However Zoo easy has no genetics module at all, it is all based on phenotype which doesn't suit me, I want the genotype in the family tree so that splits can be tracked (where known of course, a split bird paired with a bird not exhibiting the recessive gene will produce some splits in theory but with no way of identifying them).

As for the identifier I simply created a 4 digit index number 0001 (coz I'm unlikely to be tracking more than 10,00 birds in the database ) starting with the bird that arrived in my collection first and numbering up from there, I'm only up to 0008 now so it's not that hard. You could use a species specific prefix if you wanted to as it's an alpha-numeric field. Some of my birds have numbered rings, others have one or more plastic legs on one or more legs, some gave none. The ring field is not a unique field so it's easy to have multiple YL (yellow, left leg) rings. I plan to try and use numbered rings for the chicks (although I've never rung finch hatchlings and it scares me a little bit) as it may be critical to me to identify every bird if it turns out I'm working on a new mutation.

As for names, or 'unique identifiers' as I like to think of them, you can also create a shorthand system that contains information such as; species, breeder/source, year hatched, etc.
For example, the first Gouldian chick I bred this year might be assigned the following unique identifier: EGMH1101
EG = Erythrura gouldiae, MH = MadHatter, 11 = 2011, and then each bird of that species bred that season gets a number in series from 01 to 99.
In this way, you can easily see commonly sought information at a glance.
Naturally you can adapt the idea to meet your own needs.

Off on a slight deviation here but can anyone show those of us who aren't as clever on the computer how to set out a proper pen and paper breeding record?