Count of Animals

[MitzyTorres]

There should be a property AnimalCount (integer > 0) on the Animal element. Some CVIs do not have animals enumerated per head - like swine or poultry, where the animals by "groups". Even Bovine CVIs are sometimes filled in on the CVIs as a group and not individually - right, wrong or indifferent.

I have seen GVL animal entries for cattle where count = 486 Animal ID = 32BBE5001 to 32BBE5486 (486 animals)

[mmcgrath]

Mitzy, I agree that there should be an AnimalCount for the reason you outlined, e.g. "CVI for 1,000 non-uniquely identified pigs" -- I'll mull it over and propose a specific implementation in a comment on this github issue.

However, where the animals are individually identified, I think they should be individually listed in the CVI. In the GVL example you gave, I would suggest the correct approach is to loop through 32BBE5001 to 32BBE5486, creating each one as a separate animal in the eCVI. The alternative approach is to build a more complicated "Range" structure in the eCVI schema. My view on this would be, "what's the point when its trivial for the generating system to loop through the range and create them individually?"

[MitzyTorres]

I agree, that the Animal IDs should be individually entered - if the source is entered that way. I was not advocating for summarized animal node entries. However sometimes the eCVI source are simply entered with the animal group information - and this is not just for swine.

There is no programmatic way of parsing the information entered by users of other systems, unless a format for group id entries are defined (either from the source/generator or destination)- which I think is outside the scope of this group and opens up a whole new can of worms. Here are some of the non-uniquely identified (animal count > 1) ID entries I've seen from different sources (each line is an animal id entry, including the parenthesis, non-alphanumeric characters, etc): 1339,1874,1393,1712 to 1339,1874,1393,1712 (428 animals) 623_411 to 623_440 (30 animals) 008X;011X;006X;X035 TATTOOS 1400 animals (No ID Required) SBBU5491-5600 & 5607-5650

[scottrydberg]

We allow up to three unique animal entries per animal, each entry is separated by a comma. also we allow for a group number or name of animal to be entered. where the Vet has a unique range of animal ID's we allow the user to import this range of animal IDs onto the eCVI via a .csv file. This way all unique animal id's are recorded. We also allow for a range of id tags to be defined and entered onto the eCVI. The range can be altered to remove tags not used and then all are imported onto the eCVI. There needs to be great flexibility in the way Vets can enter this information and the way the schema handles these entry's.

[mmcgrath]

There's been no feedback on this issue since I made the change on 23 August -- if there are no objections recorded by 29 Nov I will mark it closed

[sahola]

I don't know if this has been answered, but I think we should reserve a field for Official ID separate from other fields that list non-official ID. We will get bad data, but that will eventually have to be sorted out by the producer/consumer. Having a Group Lot field is needed.

[scottrydberg]

Our eCVI can accommodate both group lots numbers and individual numbers/lines for each animal. We can also accommodate up to three unique i.d.s per animal or names etc. We also have a total number in the eCVI. We would want a group lot field, most of the time it would be empty where individual animals are listed.

[mmcgrath]

This has been stagnant for a number of years and will be closed on 2 Sept unless objections are raised.