Supplements are an important source of nutrients coming into a farm system and an accurate description of the type and amount of supplements brought in is critical to nutrient cycling assessments on-farm.
In the supplements tab, harvested or imported supplements can be entered and subsequently distributed.
Harvested and/or imported supplements can be distributed to blocks, enterprises, structures and storage. Harvested supplements can also be sent off farm.
Adding supplements requires information to be entered about the supplement (the information needed will depend on the type of supplement chosen). In-app help in the data entry pop-up modal will guide you through this process, so be sure to turn on Show Help.
Remembering that OverseerFM is not designed to provide an exact analysis of a years activities, but the "typical" activities for a year, if you have imported a supplement and not distributed it on-farm, it does not need to be added to the analysis.
More detail on entering Supplements is set out below.
Harvested supplements
When a supplement is grown and harvested on farm, click the "Add Harvested Supplement" button at the top of the supplements screen
Enter actual weight (in tonnes) of supplement harvested where known.
If the weight has been supplied on a dry weight basis, you need to check the box "weight defined as dry weight".
At least one harvest event is required to be entered for a harvested supplement.
The month of harvest does not influence the results, so you can total the supplements for each block or break them out to see each event. If more than one harvest event is applied for a single harvested supplement, the blocks that are in each harvest event must have the same pasture type.
After the harvested supplement is created you can "Save" the supplement that will take you back to the supplements screen or "Save and distribute" the supplement which will take you to the screen to distribute the supplement. This allows you to either set all of your supplements up first then distribute them all or distribute the supplements as you go.
Imported supplements
Imported supplements can either be "From storage" or "Purchased". Please note: where the nutrient budget is based on a one year assessment – feeds that were purchased or imported in the year of assessment but put in storage at the end of the year must NOT be included.
To add a supplement that has been either purchased or from storage select the "Add imported supplement" button. Then select whether the imported supplement is from storage or it was purchased.
Imported supplements from storage
If the supplement was from storage only the category and the dry weight value in tonnes is required to be entered. Supplements from storage can only be hay, silage, maize silage or baleage.
Imported supplements that were purchased
Purchased supplements can be any of the predefined supplements or custom supplements can be used - see custom supplements.
To choose the custom supplement select the "User defined" option from the category drop list and then the custom supplement will appear in the nutrient source drop list and can be selected.
If a custom supplement has not been created in the custom supplements screen a custom supplement can be created inline. To do this select the "User defined" option from the category drop list then select "New custom feed nutrients" from nutrient source drop list.
Custom Supplements
When adding imported supplements, if your supplement is not available from the drop down list, select the supplement with the closest characteristics (crude protein or N content) or enter as a user defined (custom) supplement.
A user defined supplement can be created in the supplements tab. This will require the nutrient concentrations, DM %, ME and digestability to be entered. The name of the supplement will then be available to be selected when importing purchased supplements for any other analysis.
Custom supplements can also be created using the "Custom compositions" menu item on the drop down list under username in the top right hand corner of the page. Select "Add Supplements" in the "Custom setup" screen
Distributing supplements
Once a supplement is created it is required to be distributed either on the farm or off the farm. To distribute the supplement you can either select the "Save and distribute" button after creating the supplement or select the "Distribute" link in the destination column within the green supplement summary section.
Supplements can be distributed to:
- To on-farm Structures (if applicable)
- Animals
- Blocks
- Storage (harvested supplements only)
- Off farm (harvested supplements only)
It is currently not possible to store purchased supplements. If you import/purchase a bulk load of supplements that will not all be used in the reporting year (i.e. some is kept in storage for the following year), only 'import' in to OverseerFM the amount that will be used in the reporting year. OverseerFM is only concerned with the imported supplements that will affect nutrient cycles in the reporting year.
When distributing supplements, you will need to define the supplement storage conditions and utilisation: Use average storage and utilisation unless have good reason to change it
Supplement summary table
Once supplements have been added to the farm analysis a green section at the top of the supplements tab will show a summary of each supplement (harvested or imported). Each supplement can be edited from this section by clicking on the link within the source column. The destination of where the supplement is distributed to can also be edited from here by clicking on the link that is within the destination column.
The supplements summary also shows how much of each supplement has been sourced and how much has been distributed. All of the sourced supplements must be distributed. If all of a supplement has not been fully distributed the remaining supplement total will be shown in the remaining column. Alternatively if more supplement has been distributed than sourced the total in the remaining column will be a negative value.