fodjan offers a 360° approach to feeding management – accordingly many functions for ration planning, feeding, documentation and evaluation are included in the product packages. This can quickly become confusing – so where is the best place to start?

In the following article, we will give you recommendations for the first steps in fodjan so that you can successfully start your new feeding program.

You have not registered yet? Here we explain how you can test fodjan for free. You have not yet been able to decide on a product package? – Here is a decision-making aid.

First steps in fodjan Pro and App

Step 1: Create and set up your farm

When you start in fodjan, whether App or Pro, you’ll go through our onboarding, where you already enter the first data for your farm – e.g. a feed group and an associated ration as well as your most important farm data.

PS: Even for advisors, it is best to start with one farm first to get to know how fodjan works. You can find out how to set up a farm as an advisor here.

Step 2: Structure your farm and create animal groups

The heart of fodjan is the ration management and with it, 3 important elements: Your feed groups, the associated rations and the feeds on your farm. In order to be able to work quickly with fodjan, we will first have a look at these 3 elements.

2.1  Your animal groups

In fodjan, your animal groups serve as a framework for your rations as well as for settings for the ration optimisation functions – but we will think about this later. So for now, fill in the basic data of your animal groups to the best of your knowledge – we can go into detail later and make adjustments.

You can find out more about how to create feed groups here.

Example view “Animal groups” page in Pro:

2.2  Your feedstuffs

Before we can create your rations, we need their basic building blocks: Your feedstuffs.

• In fodjan you have a feed stock in which you can add feedstuffs from our database, for which standardised ingredient values are already provided.
• However, you can adjust these manually on the basis of your current analyses or enter feedstuffs completely from scratch in fodjan Pro.

Learn how to create and edit feeds in fodjan here.

• You can also import feed analyses into fodjan and then use them as feed – this saves you time during set-up and also in the future when working in fodjan.

How you can use your feed analyses in fodjan can be found here.

Example view Feed stock in Pro:

2.3 Your rations and the transfer to feeding

Due to the preliminary work of the previous steps, you can now quickly and easily create your rations in fodjan.

You can read more about how to create and edit rations here.

Well done! Your ration management is up!

By the way, you can also export your rations at any time – as a PDF for your feeder or advisor or for your feed mixing technology.

Find out more here:

• Export, print and share rations
• Use the feed mixing technology interface

Step 3: Add your colleagues and

Feeding is teamwork. That is why the fodjan App and fodjan Pro offer the possibility to add further users to your farm and to assign user rights, e.g. only to read or also to edit. This allows you to share tasks, especially in the creation of rations or documentation.

Find out more here: Working together in fodjan, Invite users and manage user rights

Example view from the fodjan app:

Step 4: Documentation and reports – manually or automatically via interfaces

You can take this step at your leisure once you have established a routine in working with your rations and transferring them to feeding.

Documentation:

In the fodjan App as well as in fodjan Pro, documentation is a basic function of fodjan. Here you can track key figures that are important for your feeding strategy and monitor them over time. Many of these entries have to be maintained manually – with the app, you can do this quickly on the side. (PS: As a fodjan Pro user, the premium app version is included, simply download and log in with your Pro login data).

You can get an overview of the documentation in fodjan here: Introduction: Documentation in fodjan

Data also comes automatically into fodjan, if you wish – e.g. via our feed mixing technology interfaces and via this also into some of our evaluations. This includes key figures such as the number of group animals or feed intake.

Find out more about our interfaces in feed mixing technology here.

Reports:

Here, we also divide into evaluations on feed and, for dairy farms, also on milk yield. The basis for this is, on the one hand, the documentation in fodjan and, on the other hand, our interfaces, via which you can also upload your milk report or milk quality data, and have them displayed in a report.

Read more here: Interfaces in fodjan – Overview

Great! With the documentation and the reports, you now have a 360° view of your feeding!

Step 5: Ration optimisation

For experienced fodjan users, we also offer support in finding new rations – with ration proposals, suggestions for alternative feeds and much more. Here joint work on the rations is worthwhile, e.g. between the farm and the feeding advisor. Especially because now the basic settings in your feed groups and your feed model become relevant. But don’t worry: In this help section, we will guide you step by step and give you practical tips. Let’s start here:

Ration optimisation with fodjan – Overview