FAQ

Activities

The four activity logs — feedings, weighings, sheddings, medications — share the same shape: each entry has a date, the animal it belongs to, and a few activity-specific fields. They show up on the animal detail page and have their own list pages in the sidebar for cross-animal views.

Feedings

A feeding records what the animal ate, how much, how it responded, and the date. Fields:

  • Food — picked from your food catalog (you create those separately).
  • Quantity — how many items (e.g. 1 small rat, 2 medium frozen-thawed mice).
  • Status — accepted, refused, regurgitated. Only accepted decrements food stock.
  • Notes — free text.

Per-animal feeding settings

Each animal carries default feeding settings — the food it usually gets, the quantity, and a min/max interval (e.g. "every 7 to 10 days"). Those defaults pre-fill the feeding form so logging a feed is two clicks. The animal page also shows a "next feed window" derived from the last feeding plus the interval, so a glance at the dashboard tells you who's due.

You configure feeding settings from the Feedings tab on the animal page (Settings button), not from a global preferences screen. They live on the animal because they vary per animal — a juvenile beardie eats every two days, a 2kg female ball python eats every three weeks.

Food stock

Selecting food on an accepted feeding decrements the food's stock by the quantity, atomically (clamped at zero, never negative). Stock is a hint to reorder, not a strict ledger — if two concurrent feedings both decrement the last unit, you record both feedings and stock just sits at zero. If you need exact accounting (a commercial rodent operation, say), keep your inventory elsewhere.

Weighings

A weighing is a date, a weight in grams, and optional notes. The animal page plots weight over time so growth curves are immediately visible. Useful checks:

  • Pre-breeding females. Most species have a minimum breeding weight. The chart tells you when she's ready.
  • Plateau or loss. A weight plateau on a juvenile or a loss on an adult is the earliest signal of a problem.
  • Power-feeding patterns. Compare against published growth curves for your species.

Herply doesn't enforce minimum-weight rules for breeding readiness — that's a judgment call influenced by line genetics, age, body condition, and species, and a hard rule produces false alarms. The number is yours; the chart helps you read it.

Sheddings

A shedding records the date and any condition flags (complete, incomplete, dysecdysis). Sheds in pieces or with retained eye caps are a humidity / hydration signal worth following up. Frequency over time is a rough growth indicator — hatchlings shed every few weeks, adults a couple of times a year.

Medications

Medications record the drug, dose, route, start and end date, and a note for context. Use this for anything from a course of metronidazole to a single ivermectin treatment. There's no scheduling layer — the log is descriptive, not prescriptive.

If you're treating a respiratory infection, an upper respiratory infection (URI), parasites, or a wound, log it here. Vets sometimes ask for the dosing history; the export is one filter and a copy.

Cross-animal views

Each activity has a list page (sidebar → Activities) that aggregates across the whole space: every feeding in the last week, every weight measured this month, every shedding logged. Useful when you're catching up after a busy week and want to know what wasn't fed yet.