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Here are guidelines when deciding how to name the production years:

- If you have only one calving season or year-round calving, you may want to use the year (ex. 2006, 2007).
- If you have both a spring and fall calving season, you may want to include the season in the name (examples: Spring 2007, Fall 2007.)
- Most ranches find it easiest to name the production year to correspond to the calving activity. For example, a production year may be named Spring 2007. When breeding records are recorded in fall 2006, the production year should be indicated as "Spring 2007" since the breeding records relate to that calving season.

Using the production years feature in CattleMax is optional and should only be enabled only if you keep historical pregnancy/palpation records (such as wanting to know that cow 123 was palpated open in 2006, palpated bred in 2007, palpated bred in 2008, etc) and/or work with SPA (Standardized Performance Analysis). 

To change your setting for production years, click the Settings tab and click Preferences.

To setup a new production year, be sure the setting is enabled, then click the Settings tab and choose Production Years.

The production years feature does not need to be enabled if you only keep track of current palpation results (or do not palpate/pregnancy test at all) nor for keeping track of calving histories.