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Kits & Phenotype Buckets

A litter can be recorded two ways. A phenotype bucket is a count of look-alike kits — "4 broken black does" — with no individual records behind it. A tracked kit is its own record with a number, a sex, a colour, and its own genetics. Most breeders use both in the same litter: buckets for the ones heading to grow-out, tracked kits for the two or three they are watching. You can promote a kit out of a bucket whenever it earns the attention.

Two ways to record a litter

Phenotype bucketTracked kit
What it isA count, a colour, and a sexAn individual record
Entry costOne row for eight kitsOne record per kit
Holds geneticsPer groupPer kit
Weighed individuallyNoYes
Good forGrow-out batches, big litters, day-one entryKeepers, show prospects, anything you will name

On the mobile app, buckets are labelled variety groups, and the litter screen has a Variety groups section and a Kits roster. The web app puts both behind one card — Quick summary for buckets, Individual kit manager for tracked kits.

This is what makes a ten-kit litter fast

Recording ten kits individually on the day they are born is work you mostly throw away — half will never be named and some will not make it. Two buckets and a count takes seconds, keeps the colour data the genetics engine needs, and you promote individuals later, when it actually matters.

Tracked kits

A tracked kit has a kit number, a sex, a phenotype observation, notes, and its own genotype matrix. Its status is one of Alive, Culled, Deceased, Graduated, or Harvested.

Track a kit when you want per-kit weights, when one is spoken for and needs naming, or when you are following a particular colour through a litter.

Phenotype buckets

A bucket carries a variety, a sex (or mixed), and a count. Picking the variety from the catalog rather than typing free text is worth the extra second: it is what lets the genetics engine learn from the litter, and what lets a graduated kit come out with a proper ARBA variety already set.

Alongside the buckets, a litter tracks an untracked remainder — kits you have not described at all — so the numbers can always be made to add up.

And they do get checked. OmniBurrow compares your tracked kits, plus bucket counts, plus the remainder, against the litter's live-kit count, and warns you either way:

  • Unaccounted kits — the live count is higher than everything you have described. Add them to a bucket, or raise the remainder.
  • Over-accounted — you have described more kits than you say are alive. Decrement a bucket, or fix the live count on the litter.

Switching between them

You are never locked in.

  • Track one takes a single kit out of a bucket and gives it a full kit record. The bucket count drops by one.
  • Graduate takes a kit — tracked, or straight out of a bucket — and turns it into a full rabbit record in your herd. See Weaning & Graduation.

Graduating from a bucket resolves the ARBA variety from the reference catalog by matching the bucket's variety against that breed's varieties. On the phone this works offline, because the reference catalog lives on the device. Where there is no single clear match, the colour is kept as a custom variety rather than guessed at.

Selling straight from a litter

You do not have to graduate a kit into your herd before you can sell it. Both tracked kits and bucket quantities sell directly from the litter screen, and the graduation happens as part of the sale.

Use Sell on a tracked kit row, or on a bucket row to sell a quantity out of that group.

Selling a quantity greater than one from a bucket does not create one lumped sale. Each kit is graduated into its own rabbit record, named from your prefix and numbered, and gets its own finance row linked back to the litter — the total price you enter is split across them. Each also gets its own pedigree and transfer, so a buyer taking three kits receives three pedigrees.

Deposits already taken are credited during the sale, exactly as they are for a full rabbit. See Deposits & Sales.