Standardise or make it possible to discover extended reason codes for death, departure, and do not breed

[cookeac]

Issue #454 defined an icarReasonIdentifierType to support the country-specific extended reason codes, and defined a central place to register these here: https://github.com/adewg/ICAR/blob/ADE-1/types/icarReasonIdentifierType.json

However, this is human-readable, and the form in which dairy data organisations (DDOs) or other country-specific recording services organise their reason lists are not specified.

It would be helpful if:

• ADE contained a master list of reason identifier schemes in JSON format to make it easy for software developers to use, and
• The content of the human-readable format should be specified so that DDOs and recording services know what to provide, and
• ADE specified a simple JSON format (schema) that DDOs could publish, and that software vendors could then ingest to configure their software. This would save software vendors time from having to code their own list of values and mappings for each country. This would also mean that DDOs could maintain their own schemes on their own server, and the display label could be provided in their local translation (rather than a centralised service).

An example JSON specification might be something like the following (this is overly simplistic and not a real proposal):

{
   "code": "ABCD",
   "displayLabel" : "Acute Binary Mastitis",
   "description" : "The cause of departure is acute binary mastitis",
   "mapping" [ { "enumeration" : "icarDepartureReasonType", "value": "Mastitis" }, 
                       { "enumeration" : "icarDeathReasonType", "value" : "Disease" }]
}

[cookeac]

We agreed to raise the concept of a potential common ICAR list at the next ADE meeting. We will hold this proposal until we have that discussion.

[cookeac]

Things to think about for a global list of reason codes:

• Some reasons are gender specific (e.g. mastitis does not apply to bulls)
• Some may be species specific (wool problems do not affect cattle)
• Some only apply to death, some only to departure
• You may wish to specify just a subset of the global list to be used in a country or species - or have a language translation

Some systems already have a language translation facility.

[cookeac]

2025-07-10 EU/NZ/AU time zone meeting :
We discussed this further. We consider there are three options:

1. The Extended Reason codes as added in version 1.4 (scheme and code), with an optional mechanism to find country-specific codes as defined in the original part of this issue.
2. A master list of extended reason codes, compiled by ICAR from all available sets of reason codes, and harmonised. Organisations would be required to map to and from their own internal country-specific codes.
3. A smaller set of (common) extended reason codes, and the addition of an icarDiagnosisIdentifierType field (not required) to the death and departure resources, so that diseases could be mapped to the existing ICAR common health key, avoiding compiling a master list of all diseases as departure reasons.

We propose to discuss this in a wider group at the US/Canada/NZ meeting on 2025-08-06 and the EU/AU/NZ meeting on 2025-08-07. Please a) have your organisation compile or bring its list of departure codes AND invite any business specialist with knowledge of these codes to attend with you.

[cvigorsICBF]

These are the departure reasons for cattle recording. It includes some illnesses, but as discussed on the call, I am not a fan of that as it can cause the list to grow indefinitely as more illnesses get added.

I have requested the same from our sheep system. I'll add that later.
I have requested someone from the business side to join us for the next call, if that is still required..

CODE	DESCRIPTION
AB	Abortion
AG	Age
BB	B + B
BE	Behaviour
VD	Bovine Viral Diarrhoea
CD	Calf Died at Birth
CO	Conformation
DC	Docility
EB	EBI/EuroStars
DL	Feet and Legs
FMT	Female to Male Twin
HP	General Health Problems
SC	High Somatic Cell Count
IB	Inbreeding
IF	Infertility
IJ	Injury
IP	Intestine Problem
JD	Johnes Disease
LA	Lameness
LC	Late Calver
LM	Low Milk Yield
MA	Mastitis
NP	Neospora
PP	Poor Progeny
SR	Surplus to Requirements
TB	TB
TC	To be Culled
ZZ	Unknown/None of the above

[erwinspeybroeck]

For the Netherlands and Flanders we use the follwing list

AGE, BAD_TYPE, BEHAVIOR, CALVING_PROBLEMS, CRAMPY, EXPORT, FATTENED, FERTILITY_PROBLEMS, HEALTH_PROBLEMS, HIGH_SCC_MASTITIS, LEG_CLAW_PROBLEMS, LOW_PRODUCTION, MILKING_ABILITY, NUTRITION_DISORDERS, OTHER, SALE_FOR_LIVE, SPASTIC_PARESIS, SURPLUS_CALF, UNNECESSARY

[cvigorsICBF]

Our approach to departure reasons is a bit more elaborate. The list of departure reasons depends on the location the animal is moving to:

Destination	Mart	Farmer	Factory	Death
	Sold for Breeding	Sold for Breeding	Factory Lamb	Mastitis
	Sold in Lamb	Sold in Lamb	Poor EuroStars	Vaginal Prolapse
	Sold as Cull Ewe	Sold as Cull Ewe	Not True to Type (does not meet breed standard)	Rectal Prolapse
	Poor EuroStars	Poor EuroStars	Old Age/Functionality	Pneumonia
	Not True to Type (does not meet breed standard)	Not True to Type (does not meet breed standard)	Barren/Infertile	Scour
	Old Age/Functionality	Old Age/Functionality	Surplus to Requirements	Tetany
	Barren/Infertile	Barren/Infertile	Hard Lambing	Calcium Deficiency/Milk Fever
	Surplus to Requirements	Surplus to Requirements	Bad Mothering Ability	Post Abortion
	Hard Lambing	Hard Lambing	Bad Milk Ability	Laryngeal Chondritis/Breathing Issues
	Bad Mothering Ability	Bad Mothering Ability	Abortion	Misadventure - e.g. Fox/Dog/Drowning
	Bad Milk Ability	Bad Milk Ability	Reproductive Disorder	Died on Back
	Abortion	Abortion	Injury/Accident	Injury/Hurt
	Reproductive Disorder	Reproductive Disorder	Under/Overshoot/Teeth	Old Age
	Injury/Accident	Injury/Accident	Temperament	Other
	Under/Overshoot/Teeth	Under/Overshoot/Teeth	Mastitis	Giving Birth
	Mastitis	Mastitis	Lameness	epticaemia (Blood Poisoning)
	Lameness	Lameness	BCS	Clostridia
	BCS	BCS	Prolapse	Coccidiosis
	Prolapse	Prolapse	Damage to Udder/Teats	Nematodirus (Worms)
	Damage to Udder/Teats	Damage to Udder/Teats	Orf	Listeriosis
	Orf	Orf	Laryngeal Chondritis/Breathing Issues	Digestive System Infections
	Laryngeal Chondritis/Breathing Issues	Laryngeal Chondritis/Breathing Issues	Other	Respiratory Infections
	Other	Other		Liver Disease (Fluke)
				Digestive Tract Conditions
				Reproductive Tract Conditions
				Cardiac/Circulatory Conditions
				Stomach Ulcer/Ruptured Ulcer
				Musculoskeletal Issues
				Poisoning
				Other Disease

[cookeac]

Discussed North America / NZ time zone group 2025-08-06:

• We like the idea of a subcategory or graph like approach where a standard set of categories is used, with possibility to have regional subcategories.
• We also discussed the use of an additional Diagnosis Code (ICAR diagnosis list)
• Group to add their own lists to this thread.

[dirbSEGES]

I have add this issue earlier with the reasons we are missing #190

Hi,

we need this extra departureReasonTypes:

Unknown
Metabolic / digestive disorders (maybe nutrition?)
Other diseases
Diarrhea
Pneumonia
Elevated cell count (bad translation)
Milking time
Accident / Injury
Remediation of specific diseases (bad translation)
Missing milk release(bad translation)

[cookeac]

Agreed:

1. Suggest a small number of additional general reason codes that should be added to icarDepartureReasonType or icarDeathReasonType
2. If people would like a general extended code list, we will set up a text file that they can use to collaborate on this.

[AlexeyHardCode]

Here’s the list of DepartureReason values we couldn’t match in our system:

• Accident
• TeatInjury
• CalvingDiff
• MilkFever
• UdderConf
• OtherIllness
• Temper
• DigDisorder (Perhaps Nutrition?)
• ReprodFail (Perhaps Fertility?)
• PoorMaternalTraits (Perhaps Behaviour?)
• LimbConf (Perhaps LegOrClaw?)
• LimbIllness (Perhaps LegOrClaw?)

[cookeac]

Standard reason codes

Death Reason	Departure Reason
Missing	-
Parturition	Parturition (incl. calving difficulty)
Disease	Health
Accident	maybe add Accident, includes injury
Consumption (i.e. eaten or fed to working dogs)	-
Culled (if not a reason below, likely just means Surplus/Superfluous)	Superfluous
Other	Other
Unknown	Unknown
Age	Age
Mastitis (disease)	Mastitis
(Low or declining) Production	Production
LegOrClaw (disease or conformation)	LegOrClaw
MilkingAbility	MilkingAbility (release, milking time, etc)
Nutrition (presumably a metabolic disorder?)	Nutrition (incl Milk Fever as metabolic?)
Fertility	Fertility (do reproductive failures - abortion etc fit here?)
-	Slaughter (sale to a processor)
-	Sale (to another destination)
-	Newborn
-	Bad Type (Conformation - might this include udder conformation?)
-	Behaviour (also includes Temperament?)

Potentially missing standard Reason Codes:

• Consider adding Superfluous to Death reasons and deprecating Culled for consistency (but likely to cause breaking changes so maybe document instead)?
• Consider adding Metabolic as addition to Nutrition and provide guidance to use this instead for clarity?
• Consider adding MaternalAbility for maternal / mothering traits
• Consider adding ReproductiveFailure or Abortion to cover reproductive failures
• Consider adding BreedingIndex to cover animals culled for low Euro-Stars or country-/species-specific equivalents
• Consider adding Condition or BodyCondition or BCS
• Consider adding MouthOrTeeth as this is about the only other non-conformation area in lists above.
• Consider whether disease elements other than existing LegOrClaw and Mastitis should be broken out at this top level (e.g. diarrhea, pneumonia), or whether to use either ICAR diagnosis codes, or a defined set of extended codes for disease groups.

Potential extended reason codes

These would be mostly generic extensions to the standard reason codes.
For instance, addressing types of leg or claw/lameness, types of metabolic disorder, types of disease, types of conformation, sale types (although already mostly covered in DepartureKind),

OR decide to map all health/disease/mastitis/leg or claw conditions to the ICAR Central Health Key. The top level classification or the top-two levels would cover most of the health-related examples in lists above. A small ruminant version is under development and nearly ready I believe. Most organisations could implement a fixed mapping - e.g. "Stillbirth" -> "2.03.01" or "2.03.01.02" (more detail for each level).

[cookeac]

2025-11-26 - The group in North America / NZ time zone agrees with this approach and would like to proceed.