We tried to use as much ranching vocabulary as we could in CattleIQ, but here are some unique terms and concepts you'll want to be familiar with when using the app.

Animal

"Animal" is shorthand for "animal record"—the place where everything about a specific real-life animal is kept. Identifiers, status, event timeline, labels, weight history, genetics, and so on.

Identifier

Every animal has at least one identifier (most have a few). Each one is an ID paired with a type: M103/Tag, 93VMI0575/Bangs, etc.

Use any numbering system that fits your operation. The ID-and-type combination has to be unique on a given animal, but the same ID can be reused with a different type. A newborn calf often carries its dam's number with the type Calf Tag until it gets its own, for example.

Classification

An animal's classification is based on its sex, age, and reproduction—cow, bull, steer, heifer, first-calf heifer, heiferette. Classification is not entered directly, you enter the sex, birth, and any relevant breeding events and the classification follows.

It's used everywhere the app needs to know "what is this animal?"—including who's eligible to be selected as a sire or dam.

Status

Three options for an animal's standing in your operation:

• Active: currently in the herd, being managed day-to-day.
• Inactive: out of the herd. Sold, deceased, or otherwise gone. Records stay, but they normally fall out of live reporting and may not sync automatically.
• Reference: a placeholder for an animal you don't have and never had, but still need on file. The classic case is buying semen from a bull off-ranch—you want him to show up in virility reports and on his calves' lineage without ever owning him.

Label

Labels are custom tags you create and apply to animals. They're the most flexible and powerful custom-reporting tool in the app. Any grouping you can describe becomes a label, and from there the labeled animals can be filtered, charted, bulk-updated, and reported on as a group.

A few examples ranches use:

• One label per pasture (North 40, South pen) to count animals by location.
• Cull or Sell to flag animals for upcoming decisions.
• Good mom to credit a cow during selection.
• Grafted or Embryo for embryo-transfer tracking.
• Owner or Brand labels for co-managed herds.
• Registered for animals in your registered herd.
• Calf died to flag calf mortality quickly from the field.
• See notes to mark animals with an important note worth reading.

Each label has a color (so it stands out in reports) and a position in your label list (which controls dropdown order).

One label is built in: Sire. Applying it makes a male animal eligible to be selected as a sire on breedings and on calves.

Event

An event is a dated entry attached to a specific animal—the main way to track an animal's lifetime, from birth to sale or death. CattleIQ has a fixed set of event types:

• Birth: animal entered the world (or your records).
• Weight: a recorded weight (e.g., 1,450 lbs at fall preg-check).
• Breeding: the animal was bred (AI or natural service), with a service period.
• Pregnancy status: confirmation of pregnant or open at preg-check.
• Note: free text, dated, attached to the animal (e.g., "Limped at branding, watch for issues").
• Sale: animal was sold (and becomes inactive).
• Death: animal died (and becomes inactive).

Workday

This is the most CattleIQ-specific concept. A workday is a structured session for working a group of cattle quickly: spring breeding day, weaning, fall preg-check, branding, and the like. You decide up front what data you're collecting, and CattleIQ streamlines the interface to just that data, so you can blast through animal by animal.

Multiple devices can "run" the same workday at once, so a crew can split up and work in parallel. Everything captured gets attached to both the individual animals (as events and label changes) and to the workday itself.

Afterward, each workday gets its own report with breakdowns of what was collected and the option to filter or report on just the animals you worked.

Workdays aren't required. You can always edit an animal directly. But they're the most efficient way to get through a large group, and they keep your records honest about what actually happened on which day.

Report

A report is a view you build (or comes built) for analysis. You can build as many custom reports as you want. A report is a saved configuration:

• Filters — which animals to include (e.g., "active males under 2 years old, with the Triple J brand").
• Columns — any field on the animal record, plus calculated ranking metrics like gain rate or weight relative to herd average.
• Optional charts — visual breakdowns of the result set, like a male/female pie, percent death/loss, or preg-check status (bred, open, pregnant).

Reports are live views, always reflecting current data. Save the configuration once and pull it up any time. From a report you can export the result set or apply bulk updates to the animals it covers. Mark it a favorite to pin it to the main menu.