How can we help?

After you sign up, the setup wizard asks five short questions. Every step can be skipped and finished later.

1. Your farm: what you keep (dairy, beef or both), region and district, and the farm location.
2. Breeds: tap the breeds you keep, or type your own.
3. Groups & places: the herds you manage together (milking cows, calves…) and your sheds and paddocks.
4. Team: the workers who will send records from their own WhatsApp.
5. Animals: the ear tag is enough to start — add names, breeds and birth dates when you know them.

Prefer your phone? Send SETUP (or ANZA) to the FlexFarm WhatsApp number and answer the same questions in the chat.

Shamba is the farm’s record keeper. Tell it what happened the way you would tell a neighbour — in Swahili or English, by text or voice note. It saves the record to the right animal and replies with what it saved.

• Several records can go in one message.
• Photos work too: an ear tag, a wound, a receipt.
• Ask questions: "Who is due to calve this month?", "How is cow 7 doing?"
• Send HELP for examples at any time.

Every animal needs an ear tag (or a name you use as its tag). There are four ways to add them:

1. Web: Animals → Add animal, or the Animals step of the setup wizard (many at once).
2. WhatsApp: tell Shamba, e.g. "Register a heifer, tag 45, Friesian, born March 2024".
3. During WhatsApp setup: one animal per line — tag, sex (F/M), breed, name.
4. A spreadsheet: Imports & Integrations takes Excel/CSV and files from parlour, scale and collar systems.

Send each cow’s litres and the milking (morning, midday, evening). A whole-day total works too. Shamba warns you if a cow is on milk withdrawal so her milk stays out of the tank.

On the web, the Parlour Sheet lets you type a whole milking at once; Bulk Tank records what the buyer collected.

Say which cow calved, the calf’s sex and the tag you gave it. The calf is registered with its mother, a new lactation starts for a dairy cow, and the calving appears in the herd’s history.

• Add the birth weight and how easy it was if you know them.
• Twins: give both tags in the same message.
• A dead calf is recorded too, so fertility figures stay honest.

Record what was given, to which animals and how much. The withdrawal period comes from the medicine, and Shamba reminds you until when milk and meat must not be sold.

Shamba gives practical husbandry advice but never a drug dose — that is your vet’s job.

Send weights in kg, one animal or many. FlexFarm works out daily gain since the last weighing and when each animal will reach its target weight.

A sale takes the animal out of the herd, books the income and is blocked while the animal is on meat withdrawal. A purchase registers the animal and books the cost.

• Only the owner and managers can record sales and money.
• Add the buyer or seller and the weight when you have them.

Record income and costs as they happen: milk sold, feed, vet, wages. Ask for a report on WhatsApp, or open Money → Profit & Cost of Production on the web for cost per litre and per kg gained.

Add each worker’s WhatsApp number on the Team step of setup or on WhatsApp Assistant → Contacts. They can then record milk, treatments and weights from their own phone; only owners and managers see money.

Pause a worker who leaves: their number stops being able to record, and their past records stay.

Reply UNDO (or TENDUA) straight after a wrong record and everything that message saved is reversed. Older records can be corrected on the web, on the animal’s page.

1. Check you are writing to the FlexFarm number from the phone number registered on the farm.
2. Ask the farm owner whether your number is paused.
3. Sent many messages at once? Wait a minute, then send again — several records fit in one message.
4. Still nothing after five minutes? Report it with TATIZO on WhatsApp or from Help & Support.

Every farm starts with a free trial. After it, you pay by the size of your herd — from TSh 3,000 a month for a small farm. Your package is chosen from your cattle and cows in milk; there is no charge per user.

To pay or change your package, contact us on WhatsApp or report a "Payment & subscription" question.

On the web: Help & Support → Report a problem. Say what you were doing and what went wrong; a screenshot helps. On WhatsApp: send TATIZO (or PROBLEM) followed by the problem.

You get a reference like FF-000123. Our answer comes to your WhatsApp and appears on your Help & Support page. Send TATIZO FF-000123 to check on it.