50-day and 100-day weights

The question

Why does the app say "Its window closed without the data: it can no longer be taken" when you try to add a 50-day weight to a six-month-old lamb?

The concept

A milestone weight is a weight taken at a standard age so animals can be compared and so the genetic evaluation can use it. BreedIQ uses two: 50 days (pre-weaning growth, mostly the dam's milk) and 100 days (post-weaning growth, mostly the lamb's own genes and the ration). Because nobody weighs every lamb on exactly the right day, each milestone accepts a window and then adjusts the weight to the standard age.

The windows

As stated in the Protocols page: the 50-day weight counts as a milestone between 28 and 72 days of age (ideally 35–65); the 100-day weight between 73 and 135 days (ideally 85–115). A weighing outside those windows is still stored, as a general weight, but does not feed the milestone.

Adjusted weights

Next to each milestone the profile shows the actual weight and an adjusted one, for example 18.5 kg actual and 22.39 kg adjusted at 50 days. The adjustment corrects for age at weighing and birth type (a twin is adjusted up relative to a single), using the method "preweaning-linear-adg+birthtype, version 3.0.0". The app also states a limitation: the factors it applies were published for 60 days and are applied to 50 as a provisional adaptation.

Why it matters

These two weights carry most of the emphasis of Growth (50-day weight 35%, gain 50–100 days 45%) and a large part of Flock. Missing them for a lamb crop means the crop contributes little to the next evaluation.

How BreedIQ helps you get them

Lot controls list "50-day weighings incomplete 6/6" with the pending animals, and the lot's protocol can suggest the best date for the whole lot so most lambs fall inside the ideal window. The Chute weight form offers the weight stage (birth, 30 days, 50 days, weaning, 90, 100, 120, adult, general, control) so the record is typed correctly at capture.

Decisions it supports

Plan two weighing days per lamb crop, decide weaning dates compatible with the 50-day window, and compare lambs by adjusted weight rather than raw weight.

Limitations

An adjusted weight is still a phenotype corrected for known effects, not an EBV. Lambs with unrecorded birth type are adjusted as if their type were known from the litter count only when the app can infer it; otherwise the adjustment is incomplete and the data-quality banner asks you to confirm the birth type.