Allflex Protrack Draft User Guide

Protrack® Draft
Product Guide
Protrack Support: 0800 542 288

Getting Started with Protrack® Draft

Thank you for purchasing your Protrack Draft system. The purpose of this guide is to give you an overview of the key features of the system and to give you the information you need to get the best out of your Protrack Draft.
Protrack Draft is part of a suite of farm automation solutions designed for farmers everywhere.
Protrack Draft cuts your workload, keeps track of your animals and allows you to schedule automatic draft actions for animals in your herd.

Introduction

Protrack® Draft can be completely controlled on an app using your smart device (phone or tablet).
To ensure you have accurate drafting, you need to keep your Animal list up to date. Your Draft system has been designed to work with your MINDA® Live animal records.
An internet connection to the Protrack Draft system is required to enable the link to MINDA Live.
The Animals screen in Protrack Draft displays the current list animals available in Minda Live. Animals are maintained in MINDA Live you as per usual and this will be automatically communicated via Wi-Fi to your Protrack Draft software in-shed.

Components
The system, as installed, includes:

• Protrack Draft control gates, and Protrack Draft software to operate them.
• The Protrack Hub, which provides the web services necessary to control the system and store the gathered data.
• A connection to MINDA. Changes to your herd performed in MINDA (cow numbers, EID numbers and Birth ID’s. etc.) will be automatically synchronised with your Protrack’ SCC and Protrack Milk, and
• remote controller for the gates.

The system does not include an in-pit device, which is sold and installed separately, as most mobile devices can run the application that displays your sensor results and allows you to link the results to cows.

Protrack Draft mobile app
You can access the app via Google play or on iTunes.
Once you have the app you can create and save drafts while you are away from the shed, right down the back of the farm.
When you return to the shed, the phone running the app will need to connect to the same Wi-Fi network that your Protrack Draft software is running from.
Once back at the shed you open the app to send the drafts you have created to your shed software.

Device recommendations
The app works on most mobile devices; however, to optimise performance please follow these recommendations:

Minimum specs

• An Android or Apple device.

• Chrome or Safari web browser.

• 2GB RAM.
  NOTE: Do not confuse RAM with the total internal storage capacity of the device.

• 4.8” screen with at least 720 x 1280 pixels (306 PPI pixel density).

Recommended phones

• Android -Samsung Galaxy S5 or higher.
• Apple iPhone 6s or higher running Chrome or Safari.
• Recommended items:
  A Life-proof case.
  A wireless charger.

Accessing the app on your phone
To connect your mobile device to the app, firstly connect your mobile device to the shed Wi-Fi network:

• SSID: Connected-
• Wireless Key: Connected-<Your Supply Number
  Then, in your browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari), enter http://shed.licautomation.com
  Alternatively, a service agent may have placed an icon on your home screen or created a bookmark.
  NOTE: If it appears that the app is not updating then reload the page.

Setting up your Protrack® Draft system
Milking times
Prior to using your Protrack Draft gate for the first time you will need to tell your system when and how often the animals are going to be milked. This allows you to create draft schedules, and determines how your reports will show your information before and after milking sessions.

TIP: Set the start time slightly earlier than when you are expecting your animals to be bought into the shed to avoid overlap between your milking sessions.
Protrack Draft gives you the option to match your on farm practices when you choose one of four different milking times.

This is an important step to complete to make sure your system functions correctly. If you change your practice from milking twice a day to once a day later in the season you should make sure you update your settings here.

The options you can choose from are:

• Once a day,
• Twice a day,
• Three times a day, and
• Every 16 hours (3 times in 2 days).

Select the milking frequency you wish and enter the AM and PM milking times.
NOTE: Milking start times cannot overlap. You will receive a warning if a setting is incorrect.
Make sure you save your new settings when you have finished. A message will pop up when you save to tell you it has been updated successfully.

Gate Setup
Customised settings for your Protrack Draft gate can be managed here.

Advanced settings

IMPORTANT: These setting are entered during your installation and should only be altered under advice from your Protrack Support Representative.
Please phone 0800 542 288 before altering these settings.

Automatic draft settings – managing unlinked animals
The gate assists you in keeping track of the animals in your herd. To do this every animal in your milking herd must be tagged with an HDX EID tag, and a record of this tag entered into your system and matched with a Management Number and Lifetime ID. The system uses these to identify and draft your animals.
NOTE: Where the gate detects an animal with an EID tag physically in its ear but is unable to read who that EID belongs to (i.e. what its management number or lifetime ID is), it is known as an ‘unlinked’ animal. See below for further details.

Set up an ‘unlinked animals’ draft direction
Drafts are scheduled against the animals’ management tag number. If an animal is ‘unlinked’, it means the system is unable to recognise that a draft is recorded against that animal.
Because the system can see the EID, but has no record of who that tag belongs to (i.e. it is not matched to an animal in your herd on the records) then it will show in your Animals Drafted report as an ‘unlinked’ animal.
To solve this problem, you can set your draft gate to automatically draft unlinked animals to a pre-specified direction where they can be tagged and/or identified. This allows you to view the animal, and update their records, allowing the gate to identify and draft the animal once resolved.
In automatic draft settings (below), you can configure unlinked animals to draft to left, right or centre (don’t draft).
Once the unlinked animals have been drafted, run each unlinked animal through the gate again, noting the order they pass through in.

Go into Reports and select the Animals Drafted report.

Once the unlinked animals have been drafted, run each unlinked animal through the gate again. Go to the Animals Drafted report, the EID numbers will be displayed.
Select the EID and you will be taken to the following screen where you can allocated a cow number to the EID.

Messages

The red banner advises you when a component in your system has stopped working, and provides details of how to fix it and get your system up and running again.
The messages icon will show how many messages are waiting for you.

Click on the red banner to see a summary of the messages. The message list will display as below.

Click on the Details link of any message to see that message in full (including more details about why the error has occurred and how to fix it). The full error message will display, as shown in the example below.

Click Back to return to the previous screen.

Menus
The Protrack Draft in-shed software has a number of different sections, each with their own purpose and function.
To navigate these sections, click on Menu (top left of the screen).

Select a function from the Menu.

Animals

In the Animals screen you can:

• Search for an individual animal.
• View a full list of all animals recorded in your MINDA data.
• See the total animal count for the herd.

The animal details are shown in a list, sorted by management number and including their lifetime ID (Birth ID).
Searching for a specific animal
Search for a specific animal by entering its management tag in the Find Animal search box at the top of the page. This filters the list to show all animal that match the number you typed.
Click on the animal number to view its details on the Animal Information page.
To draft the selected animal click on the icon.

Drafting tab
Selecting Draft from the Main Menu will open the Protrack Draft page.

The Protrack Draft screen is made up of three parts, the Create draft section, the Draft at next appearance list, and the Scheduled drafts list, as shown below.

Create a draft
To create a draft simply click on the Create draft button. Enter the animals you require to be drafted, set the direction and when you would like to take place and save.

Draft at next appearance
Animals included in a draft at next appearance are drafted in the specified direction whenever they are next seen at the gate regardless of when the draft was created – it could be months in advance or moments before the animal walks through the drafting gate sensors.
To create a Draft at next appearance, select the Create draft button. Select the animals to be drafted, set the draft direction then save.

Modifying animals from Draft at next appearance
To delete or edit animals from a Draft at next appearance, go to the Draft tab and select Draft. You will be taken to the Draft screen where you can delete or modifiy the selected draft. Select the icon, and you will be taken to the draft details page. To remove an animal from the draft click on the X and save.
If you would like to add an animal to the draft, just type in the animal number in the search bar, select the animal then save.

Draft on a specific date
Scheduled drafts give you the flexibility to choose when and how you want to draft your animals, or whether they will be drafted in the current milking, a future milking or a series of future milking sessions.
To create a scheduled draft, select create draft, select the animals to be drafted and the direction. Select the specific date the animals are to be drafted, name the draft, select the date.
If you require this to be a multiple drafts, tick the multiple drafts box, end date and what session the animals are to be drafted AM or PM and press save.

Report
Selecting Reports from the Main Menu will provide a list of reports you can use to assist with milking and drafting decisions.

Drafting during milking

A real time view during milking
To watch the drafts as they occur (in real time) during milking, open the Animals to be drafted report, which will provide you with a view of what is happening.
As animals progress through the gate they will be drafted to the destination you have scheduled, and this will show on the screen.

Dashboard

Drafting dashboard
Selecting the Dashboard option from the main menu will you with further functionality to assist you with your drafting decisions.

Once you have selected the Dashboard tab, you will then be taken to the drafting dashboard.

Animal count
Selecting the Cow Count icon will display animals that were either seen or unseen on a select day, and the time she entered the shed.

If you know of an animal that will not be present at milking, you can choose to ignore her. Once you have selected the Ignore button the animal will no longer appear in the ‘Unseen’ animal list. Next time an ignored animal enters the shed she will automatically appear back in the Seen list.

If you accidently ignore an animal, select the Undo button next to the animal, and she will be added back into the Unseen list.

Manual draft

Each Draft comes with a four button wireless remote control which allows you to override the software at any time to manually draft your animals.
You can also lock your gates, if you want an entire group of animals to go in a certain direction for that milking. If included in your system you can also manually control your flipper and shutter gates via this remote.
This is also how you are able to draft an animal that has no EID tag (an unknown animal). There are four buttons on your remote.

| Draft left
---|---
| Draft right
| Flipper gate control
| Protrack’ Heat shutter gate control

Remote instructions

Open/Close the flippers| The flippers will open or close every time you press the button.
If you manually close them they will not reopen until you press the button a second time.
---|---
Draft next animal| Press the left or right draft button once to draft the next animal (the gate will automatically re – centre once the animal is drafted).
Lock the gate| Hold the left or right button down for two seconds and your gate will lock left/right.
Unlock it by pressing the left/right button again.

Things to note

• The gate will not move if there is an animal in it already. Make sure you use the remote to draft your animal before she enters the gate otherwise the next animal will be drafted instead of her.
• If you press the remote after the EID is read but before the animal enters the gate she will draft correctly but the reporting may be affected (using the remote overrides and interrupts the software).

How drafts are prioritised
The Protrack Draft software is based on the principal that if an animal has more than one draft scheduled for the same milking session then the one she was added to last is the one that will action.
Updating or assigning an EID tag via the Animals drafted report
When the draft gate detects an EID tag that is not currently registered on your herd records it display on the Animals Seen report as ‘Unlinked’.
You can select any of these unlinked EID’s and assign them to an animal that is already in your herd. This triggers a record sent to MINDA which replaces the existing EID record against the animal. If the animal doesn’t have an existing EID it will create that record in the system.

If an Unlinked EID Tag is detected during a milking a warning will display on the Animals Seen report. Clicking Show will filter the report to display only the unlinked tags making it easier to then assign the EID to an animal.
Assign an EID
To assign an EID tag to an animals’ management tag number, tap on the unlinked record you would like to update. This will take you to the Edit Animal page.

Enter the management tag number of the animal you wish to update.

The animal will need a management number to use Protrack Draft.
The animal also needs to be in your herd records on MINDA Live with at least a lifetime ID and animal number so Protrack Draft can match the records up.
If the animal is already on your records, when you select the Animal Management Number, the Lifetime ID (Birth ID) will populate so that you can check you have the right animal.
All three pieces of tag information need to match the physical tags the animal is wearing.
If you’re happy they match, press Save to complete the record.

NOTE: If the animal you have assigned the EID to already had an EID recorded against it, then the old EID will appear in your Animals drafted report as unlinked for you to allocate to the correct management number.

Missing animals report

This report shows all the animals in the current milking session that have not been through the draft gate yet. It should be run at the end of a milking so that any animals that have not shown up will be listed.
It runs off all of the animals in your herd rather than those in milk so knowing the number of in-milk animals expected to show will help to give this report context.

The report also shows the last time an animal was in the shed which can help to figure out why they may be missing – e.g., an animal that was last seen over 60 days ago may not be missing – she just might not have calved yet, whereas an animal last seen two days ago in the peak of milking may indeed be missing and require searching for.

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