Poultry bookkeeping is central to poultry records and poultry farming business in general. Without poultry bookkeeping you cannot track your poultry expenses and sales.
There are several ways by which you can do poultry bookkeeping. Moreover, these can be categorised into manual and digital. For instance in manual, you can keep hand written notes while in digital you can use various software and apps.
Essentially, you should use a tool which enables you to keep track of your farm’s finances. Additionally, such a tool should give you a good overview of your farm’s performance. Kukufarm, our poultry management app does these and much more. Get it from Google Play or App Store.
Also see 5 Best practices how to keep accurate poultry records.
Basics of poultry farm bookkeeping
For small and medium poultry farmers, bookkeeping involves keeping records of flock sales and expenses. Below is a table showing sample expenses and sales items you should track for in poultry bookkeeping.
| Expenses | Sales |
|---|---|
| Birds | Eggs |
| Feed | Birds |
| Water | Manure |
| Labor | Sacks |
| Utilities / heating | Other |
| Coop construction & maintenance | |
| Feed processors | |
| Produce packaging | |
| Supplies: feeders, drinkers, etc | |
For ease of mind, we recommend logging poultry records at your earliest convenience possible. If you delay and postpone doing so, you are likely to forget exact amounts, and even the data logging itself.
As long as we talking poultry records, which do you think is better for Poultry record keeping: Excel or mobile apps?
Benefits of poultry bookkeeping
To begin with, doing poultry bookkeeping enables you to track flock performance. At the end of the day, or week or month, you will have your ledgers in order.
Furthermore, if for instance you want to calculate feed conversions ratio, you will already have poultry feed costs on hand.
Secondly, doing poultry bookkeeping means that you are running your farm as a business venture. That means that you are doing all the necessary paper work and are taking your farming seriously.
Moreover, poultry bookkeeping enables you to practice data based poultry farming. For instance, you can tell the actual sales you get from a flock including egg sales, and the sale of a harvested flock. Based on such data you will be able to plan future farm expansion or activities.
First and foremost however, when using a poultry management app such as Kukufarm, you can log your data as you go.
Since you always have your phone with you, you can capture financial activity as it happens. For instance, when you’re at the market selling chicken or eggs, or are at the agro-dealers purchasing feeds.
As a result of making record of sale and expense activities as they happen, your eventual and actual bookkeeping will be simple.
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You may also be interested in how Kukufarm reminds you of missed egg logs.