Miscellaneous Administration

This section contains configuration screens that control foundational settings across GEM. Most of these are set up once and rarely changed, but they affect how data entry, reporting, and animal records behave throughout the application.

Edit Client Settings

Controls operation-wide defaults and behavior. Changes here take effect immediately for all users in your operation.

General Settings

Uses EID — Whether your operation uses electronic ID (EID) tags. When set to Y, EID fields appear throughout GEM's data entry forms. Set to N to hide those fields if you don't use EID.

Default Commercial — When set to Y, new animal records default to "commercial" breed type rather than a registered breed. Set this to match how your operation primarily enters new animals.

Default Breed — The breed association that defaults when creating new animal records. Choose the association your operation registers with most often.

Commercial Implies Recipient — When set to Y, commercial-breed cows are automatically treated as ET recipients in breeding workflows. Relevant only to operations doing embryo transfer work.

Takes PAP Scores — Whether your operation records PAP (pulmonary arterial pressure) scores. Set to Y to enable PAP score fields on animal records.

Active — Controls whether this client account is active in the system.

Contact Information

Three required fields — Contact Person, Contact Phone, and Contact Email — store the primary contact for your operation. These are used for system notifications and GEM support.

Email Notifications

These settings control when GEM sends automated email notifications about changes to public data that affects your private records (for example, when another GEM user updates a shared animal's information):

• Email If Active — Only send notifications for active animals.
• Email If Name — Send a notification when an animal's name changes.
• Email If City/State — Send a notification when a contact's city or state changes.

Breed Specifications

For each breed association your operation registers with, you can configure:

Each association can only appear once. If you enter any breed specification, all fields for that row must be filled in.

Edit User EPD Indexes

Allows you to create up to 9 custom EPD indexes — your own weighted formulas that combine multiple EPD traits into a single selection index. These indexes appear in custom views, reports, and anywhere EPD data is displayed.

What an EPD Index Is

An index is a formula that sums weighted EPD values and an optional constant:

Index = (EPD_A × coefficient_A) + (EPD_B × coefficient_B) + ... + constant

For example, a "Growth Index" might weight Weaning Weight EPD at 0.5 and Birth Weight EPD at -0.25, plus a constant of 10.

Setting Up an Index

For each of the 9 index slots (INDEX_1 through INDEX_9):

1. Your Name — Enter a custom display label for this index (alphanumeric and underscore only). If left blank, the index is labeled INDEX_1, INDEX_2, etc.
2. Constant — A numeric value added to the formula regardless of the animal's EPDs.
3. EPD Coefficients — For each available EPD trait, enter a numeric multiplier. Leave blank to exclude that trait from the formula. Coefficients can be positive or negative.

Only EPD traits with a coefficient entered are included in the formula. Index slots with no coefficient and no constant are not saved.

How Indexes Are Applied

When you save your indexes, GEM creates a database view specific to your account that computes the index value for every animal. These computed values appear anywhere EPD data is displayed — custom views, simulated mating reports, and animal browsing screens.

Edit Medical Treatments

Defines the treatments, medications, vaccines, and procedures that can be recorded on animal health records. You must create a treatment definition here before it can be applied to an animal.

Fields

Using Treatments on Animal Records

Once defined, treatments appear in the dropdown on the Animal Edit → Medical screen. When recording a treatment on an animal, you select the treatment definition and enter the specific date, dosage, technician, and any lot or cost information for that event. All treatment history is preserved even if a treatment is later made inactive.

Edit Breeding Seasons

Defines the breeding seasons that can be associated with AI, observed, and pasture breeding records. Breeding seasons allow you to group and filter breeding activity by time period and herd type.

Fields

The combination of year and description must be unique — you cannot have two seasons both named "Spring 2024."

The Default Season

Every operation has a built-in Default season (year 1950) that cannot be edited or deleted. It is available as a fallback when no specific season applies to a breeding record.

How Seasons Are Used

The season dropdown appears on every AI, observed, and pasture breeding entry screen. When you create a breeding record, you select the applicable season. This lets you later filter and group breeding records by season in reports — for example, comparing conception rates between spring and fall herds, or reporting on a specific year's breeding program.

Label Private Variables

GEM's animal records include a set of general-purpose custom fields that your operation can use to track any additional information not covered by the standard data fields. This screen lets you assign meaningful names to those fields so they appear clearly labeled throughout the application.

Available Custom Fields

There are four types of custom fields, 10 of each (plus one large text field):

Assigning Labels

Enter a custom label next to any field you want to rename. Labels must be alphanumeric characters and underscores only — no spaces or special characters. Leaving a field blank keeps the default name (C1, S2, I5, etc.).

For example, if your operation records a body condition score as an integer, you might label I1 as Body_Condition_Score. That label then appears on the private animal data entry form, in custom views, and in reports wherever that field is shown.

Labels are specific to your operation — other GEM users see their own labels for the same underlying fields.

Where Labels Appear

Custom labels show up in:

• Animal Edit → Private Animal Data — the data entry form for private fields
• Custom Views — when building or viewing a custom report that includes private fields
• Animal Reports — anywhere private data columns are selected for display