Keeping a Barn Notebook
One of the first things we did when we began raising alpacas was to put a notebook in the barn. It’s just a 3-ring binder full of scrap paper. Everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – that happens in the barn is written in the notebook.
I can’t begin to count the number of times that book has saved the day. In addition to writing down weights, etc, that we than transfer each alpaca’s medical records, we write down everything we observe. It is amazingly helpful to be able to look back at our notes leading up to a particular health problem or notes about what we did to handle a situation that has come up again.
You never know what small detail or observation will be meaningful down the road. Write it all down and it will be there if you need it.
It’s probably time to send some of these notes to the shredder, but for now we have all our barn notes dating back to the beginning in 1999.
Mary Fricke
Perhaps you could have them scanned/digitized before discarding them. You never know when or how the information they contain may be useful.
Terry
Not a bad idea!