Tracking pregnancy and progress

After you record a breeding, Creatures tracks the pregnancy on the animal's Breeding tab, with the expected due date, a milestone timeline, and your progress notes and photos. This guide explains everything on that tab and what each part is telling you.

The breeding tab

Open the dam's profile and choose Breeding. The tab only appears once an animal has breeding activity, so a fresh animal will not show it until you record a breeding.

The active pregnancy card

The card for an active pregnancy shows:

• Expected date and window. The expected due (or hatch) date is the single best estimate, and the window ("Window M j to M j") is the range it is likely to fall in. The window exists because no projection is exact; the wider the species' natural range, the wider this window.
• Progress photo count and the sire or source. A quiet line shows how many progress photos you have added and who the sire is (linked if he is on Creatures, or shown as the stored material the breeding came from).
• Actions (when you can manage the animal's records): Add progress photo opens a pre-birth progress record already attached to this cycle; Record (calving, whelping, and so on) opens the birth record for this cycle; and Compare appears once the dam has more than one cycle, for looking at pregnancies side by side.

The "what to expect" timeline

Below the card is a "what to expect" timeline of species-specific milestones, generated from the service date and the species' biology. Each milestone shows a title and a date or date window, and the ones that map to a loggable event carry a one-tap Record button. For cattle, for example, the timeline points to when a pregnancy check is reasonable, then to pre-birth checkpoints, then to the expected birth. The value of the timeline is that it tells you what should be happening and when, so a check is not forgotten and you know whether the pregnancy is on track. Once the birth is recorded and the offspring exist, the sire and dam you set here carry through to each one's pedigree.

Log progress

Add a pre-birth progress record whenever there is something to capture, like udder development or a change in behavior. Each entry has:

• A date (when you observed it).
• An optional note (a short description, for example "Day 275, udder filling").
• Optional photos.

These build a timeline you can look back on, oldest first. A progress record can be attached to the cycle or left unattached; attaching it is what lets it show on the cycle and feed the comparison feature. (If a photo is logged without a cycle link, the dashboard flags it as one "to attach.")

Compare pregnancies side by side

If you breed the same dam more than once, the Compare cycles view lines two pregnancies up next to each other and buckets the photos by how far out they were taken (for example, "28+ days out," "about 14 days out," "due week," and "after due date"). This lets you see whether this pregnancy looks like the last one at the same stage. You need at least two cycles, with photos on a completed one, for the comparison to have anything to show.

Keeping the expected date accurate

The expected date comes from the service date and the species' gestation length. If a pregnancy check or new information sharpens your estimate, update the projected date override on the breeding record and the expected date, window, and milestones all re-anchor to it. The gestation calculator is handy for working the new date out, especially when you want to back-calculate from a confirmed check.

Sharing with buyers

If you have reserved animals from this pregnancy to buyers, you can mark individual progress updates to share with them so they can follow along, without exposing your full records. See Sharing pregnancy updates with reserved buyers.

Related information

• Recording a breeding
• Using the gestation calculator
• Recording births and creating a litter
• Sharing pregnancy updates with reserved buyers

Updated on: 23/06/2026