Leasing Goats In & Out
Leasing is common in the goat world — a buck out for a season, a doe leased to a 4-H family, a promising animal placed with another breeder. Herd Manager tracks both directions without pretending the animal was sold.
Lease tracking is newer than most of the app. It works, and it's in active use — but if something doesn't fit how your leases run, the 💬 Feedback button genuinely shapes what gets built next.
Leasing a Goat Out
Open the goat's profile → ☰ → 🤝 Lease.
Record who has her, when the lease started, when you expect her back, the terms, and contact details for the lessee. The goat stays yours — her pedigree, history, and offspring records all remain in your herd.
The Lease Receipt
Herd Manager generates a receipt for the lease covering the animal, the parties, the dates, and the terms. You can optionally include her recent health record, which is usually what the other farm actually needs — vaccination status, recent treatments, and any active withdrawal.
Sharing Records with the Lessee
If the other farm also uses Herd Manager, you can send the goat's records across. They see her history, and care they log during the lease can come back to you when she returns rather than being lost or re-keyed.
The share shows its status on the lease panel — sent, or accepted by the other farm.
Leasing a Goat In
The same panel handles animals coming to you. A leased-in goat shows a 🤝 Leased In status and records the owning farm, the start date, and when she's expected back.
She appears in your herd for day-to-day purposes — health records, breeding, milk — while staying clearly marked as someone else's animal.
Bringing a Goat Home
When a lease ends, closing it out returns the goat to normal status and files the lease in her history. If the other farm shared records back, you can bring their entries in at that point; the app checks for duplicates so care logged on both sides doesn't land twice.
Past leases stay on the goat's record. A doe who's been leased three times shows all three.
What Lease Is Not
- Not a sale. Use Sell/Transfer when ownership actually changes hands.
- Not a boarding arrangement where you keep ownership and possession — for a goat that's physically still on your farm, a note or pen assignment fits better.
Some leases — 4-H arrangements especially — leave the animal physically on your farm. Marking her leased is still the right call for recordkeeping, but expect her to drop out of some daily-care surfaces. If that's your situation, say so via 💬 Feedback; it's a known design question and real examples shape the answer.