Daily Farm Routine Checklist for Sheep, Goat and Camel Farms

A good daily farm routine has three fixed rounds: a morning check of every pen (water, feed, sick or down animals, births), a midday round focused on heat, water and shade, and an evening round to close the day and record what happened. Add a short weekly review of stock, weights and pending treatments, and most problems are caught while they are still small.

Most losses on a sheep, goat or camel farm do not come from rare disasters. They come from small things noticed one day too late: a ewe that stopped eating, a trough that leaked overnight, a kid that did not suckle. A routine is simply a way of making sure the same important things are looked at every day, by someone, in the same order.

Why a fixed routine beats "checking when you can"

When the owner or a single experienced shepherd does everything, the routine lives in their head. That works until they travel, fall ill or the herd grows. A written routine does three things:

• It removes forgetting. The same questions are asked every day: is everyone eating, drinking, standing, breathing normally?
• It makes work shareable. A new worker can follow a checklist from the first day, even if they do not yet know every animal.
• It creates records. Each round leaves a trace, so you can see patterns: the same pen with problems, the same animal treated twice, feed running out faster than expected.

The aim is not paperwork. The aim is that nothing important depends on memory alone.

The morning round: the most important 30-60 minutes

The first round of the day is when you find what happened overnight. Do it before feeding, because animals that do not come to the feeder are the ones you need to see.

1. Count and look. Walk every pen. Look for animals lying apart, standing with the head down, breathing fast, coughing, limping or with swollen bellies.
2. Births and newborns. Check pens of animals close to birth. Make sure every newborn has suckled colostrum, is warm and is with its mother. Record the birth, sex and mother straight away.
3. Water. Check every trough and drinker: clean, full, flowing. A blocked float valve in summer can become an emergency within hours.
4. Feed. Look at what is left from yesterday. Large leftovers or empty troughs both tell you something about appetite and ration size.
5. Treatments due today. Give scheduled treatments and vaccinations as agreed with your vet, and record who gave what to which animal.
6. Dead animals. Remove them quickly, note the number and the likely cause, and call the vet if several animals die or the cause is unclear.

Midday and evening rounds

Midday round (shorter, 15-20 minutes). In hot countries this is mainly a heat and water check. Look for panting animals crowding in shade, check that shade structures and fans work, and top up water. In cooler seasons, use it to check animals that looked weak in the morning.

Evening round (20-40 minutes).

• Second feeding if your system uses two meals.
• Re-check sick or isolated animals and the animals you flagged in the morning.
• Check animals close to giving birth again, especially those showing early signs of labour.
• Close gates, check fences and make sure young stock are where they should be.
• Write down the day: births, deaths, treatments, animals moved, feed used, any purchase or sale.

A simple daily checklist you can print or copy

Keep it short enough that a tired worker will actually complete it. A checklist that takes two hours will be skipped.

The weekly and monthly layer

Daily rounds catch emergencies. Weekly and monthly checks catch slow problems.

Weekly (about 30-60 minutes):

• Feed and medicine stock: what will run out in the next two weeks?
• Animals treated more than once this week: do they need the vet or culling?
• Weights of growing or fattening animals, if you weigh weekly or every two weeks.
• Tasks that were not completed, and why.
• Cleaning of feeders, drinkers and bedding areas.

Monthly:

• Head count by group: births, purchases, sales, deaths.
• Expenses against sales and cost per head.
• Upcoming events: expected births, vaccination dates agreed with your vet, weaning, the next selling season.

If you work with staff, link each recurring job to one named person. Our guide on running a farm with a team explains how to assign tasks and permissions without confusion.

Turning the routine into records with Throf

A paper checklist is a good start, but paper gets wet, lost or filled in at the end of the week from memory. In Throf, the same routine becomes daily work: workers see their tasks on the phone, record births, treatments, meals and weights as they happen, and the reminders for vaccinations and expected births appear without anyone having to remember them. The daily work sheet then shows the owner what was done, by whom, even when they are not on the farm.

Grouping animals by pen makes the rounds faster, because each worker checks "their" groups. If your pens are mixed, start with our guide on organising pens and groups.

Mistakes that break a routine

• Feeding before looking. Once animals crowd the feeder, you no longer see the one that stayed behind.
• Ignoring small changes. One animal eating less is information. Three in the same pen is a warning.
• Not involving the vet early. When several animals show the same signs, call the vet rather than trying treatment after treatment.

A routine that is simple, written and followed every day is one of the cheapest tools a farm has. Start with the morning round, make it a habit, then add the rest.