# Start Here Welcome to AnimalTrakker®’s support system! AnimalTrakker® is a multi-species farm management software suite that can record and track sheep, goats, cattle, horses, donkeys, and pigs. Each program targets a specific user or function. At its core is the AnimalTrakker® Database, an SQLite Database that's used by all of the different software packages. We'd like to start by saying that we've created this support manual to be different. AnimalTrakker® is a program created over time, by several different coders, specifically to suit the needs of ranchers and shepherds. We want you to read the manual. Rather than being a step-by-step experience, we wanted to use it to illustrate *how* AnimalTrakker® can benefit you. To that end, parts of the manual will read more like a novel or story than a how-to guide. You can follow these stories or go directly to pieces that are of interest to you. ## Will AnimalTrakker® Work For Me? Before you start implementing our system, we recommend you take some time to decide whether it's the right fit for you. AnimalTrakker® is targeted for 3 classes of users. 1. Smaller farms that want to track a lot of data about individual animals. 2. Large ranches with thousands of animals who only want to track a small subset of their animals at a given time, or a small set of things to track like animal movements. 3. Purebred registries, either existing or new, that are just getting started or want to move to a more user-friendly registration and population analysis package and who's total historical populations sizes are less than 50,000 animals. You can help decide whether AnimalTrakker® is right for you by asking **six simple questions**. **One:** Do you need to know and record the parents of each animal born on your farm? **Two:** Can you or will you maintain permanent IDs of every animal on your farm? **Three:** Do you want to track performance and management tasks to reduce labor and costs for maintaining your flock or herd? **Four:** For those looking at AnimalTrakker® for registrations, is the population size you need to track, including historical animals, less than 50,000 animals? **Five** Are you moving toward collecting more information on your large flock or herd to increase profitability and weed out under performing animals? **Six** Do you have hundreds or thousands of animals and need to track movements on or off grazing allotments? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, AnimalTrakker® will likely be a great fit for you. If you've answered no to all of them, AnimalTrakker® may not be a good fit as-deployed for your operation. If you are ready to jump in the head over to ## [[What Does AnimalTrakker® Do?]] # Story Path We have a number of short stories about how a small purebred rare breed sheep flock can use AnimalTrakker® in day to day operations. These stories show specific use cases. They are meant as a guide to what is possible and are not an exhaustive list of options. If you prefer to see what AnimalTrakker® can do for your farm or ranch you might want to read these stories. [[The Farming Year]] We still think it's important to have how-to and troubleshooting sections to help you diagnose and solve issues. There is a more common technical approach to specific ssues and fixes within each of the major components of the AnimalTrakker® system. We've done our best to blend these two approaches in this support manual, while still keeping navigation easy. If you have any questions or suggestions for us, please don't hesitate to contact our team at [email protected]. # More Information To learn more about the entire suite of AnimalTrakker® programs check out **[[AnimalTrakker® System]]** To learn about where we came from and a peak at where we are going check out **[[The History of AnimalTrakker®]]** To see where we are headed check out our **[[AnimalTrakker® Roadmap]]** - a brief explanation of our current projects and future plans, updated quarterly. We've broken this list down into three sections. Current Projects are the things we're working on right now here at AnimalTrakker®. Upcoming Projects will be tackled in the near future. Future projects are on our radar, but we may not necessarily have a deadline set for implementation. To see our philosophy and goals check out **[[AnimalTrakker® Philosophy]]** # Open Source Part of the beauty of AnimalTrakker® is that we've built it with open-source code that can be copied and altered by anyone. If the program won't work for you as deployed, please feel free to tweak it to suit your unique needs. However, keep in mind as you read that this guide was crafted with our core AnimalTrakker® system in mind. ## Source Code Repositories The source code for all the applications are on GitLab as a separate repositories in this directory: [https://gitlab.com/animaltrakker_system](https://gitlab.com/animaltrakker_system) ## Licenses AnimalTrakker® software versions 0.x.x are currently released under the Apache License Version 2.0 AnimalTrakker® documentation including this entire support website is all Copyright 2024-2025 by AnimalTrakker Services LLC and licensed under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) AnimalTrakker® and the AnimalTrakker® logo are trademarked by Desert Weyr LLC and used with permission. # Support AnimalTrakker® Development If you'd like to support our efforts here at AnimalTrakker®, you can do so by purchasing optional hardware, hiring us to manage your registry hosting and maintenance, or making a monetary donation. You can also donate your time by helping our programmers and coders.