Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. LivestockBook is designed to work offline, and most features can be used without an internet connection. A connection is only needed for things like subscriptions and support links.

LivestockBook supports cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, donkeys, horses, buffalo, rabbits, alpacas, llamas, camels and ostriches.

No. Alongside individually identified animals you can keep a herd or flock as one unit, with a head count rather than a tag per bird. Births, deaths, sales and purchases move that count for you, and a flock gets a few record types of its own, such as feed and egg production. Most keepers use both: cattle by the animal, poultry by the flock.

Two things: an animal register, listing your animals along with any herds and flocks, and your records. Either comes out as a PDF or a spreadsheet, filtered in the Export tab by whatever you need — farm, location, label, species, status, record type or date range. PDFs carry your farm name and logo, so they are ready to print or hand over.

Yes. You can set up as many farms as you keep stock on, and any number of locations within them — you name those yourself, so call them paddocks, sheds, pens, hutches or fields. Labels group animals across all of it, however suits you: breeding stock, organic, this year's lambs.

Every feature, with two limits: 100 records and 5 exports. There is no cap on how many animals, herds or flocks you keep, and backups are never limited — a backup is how you rescue your own farm's data, so it is free whatever plan you are on.

LivestockBook is on the App Store for iPhone now. The Android version is on the way — join the Facebook group and you will hear when it lands.

Not yet. Your data is stored locally on your device, so it does not sync between devices. Accounts with syncing across devices are a feature we are actively working on.

Not yet. A web portal for organisations is also in the works.

LivestockBook is free to download and use, with every feature included. LivestockBook Pro is a subscription that lifts the two free-plan limits, so records and exports stop being counted.

Yes. LivestockBook Pro is billed through your App Store account, so you cancel it the same way as any other subscription, from the subscription settings on your device. You keep Pro until the end of the period you have already paid for, and your animals and records stay on your device either way.

On your device. Your animals, records and farm setup are saved locally, so everything stays available offline and LivestockBook does not upload your records to a server. Because the data lives on the device, it is worth taking a backup from time to time.

Backup saves everything to a single file — your animals, herds and flocks, records, farms, locations, labels, medicines and your profile settings. Switch on "Include photos in backup" in Settings and the photos travel with it, which makes for a larger file. You then choose where to keep it through the usual share sheet: Files, iCloud Drive, Google Drive or email. To restore, pick that file from the Restore option and LivestockBook replaces what is on the device with the contents of the backup.

Your records are stored on the device, so take a backup before switching phones and keep the file somewhere off the device, such as cloud storage or your email. Include photos in that backup if you want them to come across too. On the new phone, install LivestockBook and restore the file to bring your animals, records and setup over. If you subscribe to Pro, use Restore Purchases on the new device rather than the backup file — the subscription belongs to your App Store account, not to the data.

It can help you prepare. You can filter your records by animal, record type and date range, then export the result as an organised PDF or spreadsheet carrying your farm details, ready to print or hand over. Record-keeping requirements differ from country to country, so please check what your own local rules ask for. If something they require is missing from the app, let me know and I will look at adding it.

Yes. If your stock is already written down somewhere else, you can bring the animals in three ways: type the tag numbers straight in, paste a table copied out of a spreadsheet, note or message, or pick a CSV file saved from Excel, Numbers or Sheets. A blank template is there if you want the right shape to start from. Whichever way you choose, LivestockBook shows you what it has read from each column, lets you correct anything it guessed wrong, and gives you a preview to confirm before a single animal is saved. Records themselves are not imported yet — only the animals — so if that would help you, say so in the Facebook group or by email.