Does anyone know of an app (or website) where I can track observations of Domestic Farm animals, particularly rare breeds?
as opposed to searching a marketplace for livestock?
assuming people wander around looking for rare breeds of domestic farm animals, i suppose they could use projects in iNat to collect those observations. or else you can start your own app or website. it looks like someone already owns cattlerustler.com, but cowpoacher.com is an available domain.
(As the owner of livestock, I frown on poaching, rustling, tipping, and malicious gate-opening. But still. “cowpoacher.com”. )
HappyBird44, you could start at The Livestock Conservancy. They might have something you’re interested in.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough - I’m looking for a resource that children/adults can use to track visits to farms/places and record the domesticated species they have seen, especially with a view to completing a checklist of rare/heritage breeds.
No implied trespassing/poaching or whatever.
I asked as I’m not aware of any such app or site existing at present.
Yes, sorry, didn’t mean to imply you were actually up to anything nefarious. :-)
I would check with The Livestock Conservancy. An app like the one you describe would certainly be compatible with their efforts to engage the public and encourage a greater appreciation for these rare breeds.
And I wonder whether the UK has something along the lines of the 4-H program here in the US? An extra-curricular agricultural organization for school-aged children. Any entity like that might be helpful.
besides using something like the website wendyjegla referenced as a reference for breeds, i would either just keep a personal list as something like a text file (or pen on paper), or else you can take photos and add notes and breed info as tags on those photos. once you have a collection of tagged photos, there are lots of different applications / tools that will allow you to search within your tags, map the observations, compile a list of tag values, etc.
i think the reason you’re unlikely to find an app or website that encourages the public to post observation of farm animals is because – unless you’re posting information about your own animals – you run into lots of moral and even legal issues when you post photos and locations of other people’s animals.
as an analogy, some folks track celebrity movements based on public information about where their private airplanes are going, and a lot of people get upset about their locations getting shared with the public. even though there’s nothing legally at issue in this use case because the information is sourced from public data, there’s still a question of whether publishing this sort of information in a curated form tied to specific celebrities serves the public more than it potentially harms a particular individual.