Keeping poultry records is essential for poultry farmers. First and foremost, poultry records, also known as flock records enable you to determine the productivity of your flocks.
With poultry records you can track the flock finances, mortality rate, and egg production rate of your flocks. Besides keeping track of your flock’s yield, you can use poultry records to compare flocks.
What are poultry records?
At least 4 items make up the core of poultry records: mortality / liveability, egg production, finances, and flock schedule. Key components of poultry records can include:
- Finances: sales and expenses
- Stock: mortality and liveability
- Egg production and production rate
- Vaccination schedule
- Feeding schedule
Why keep poultry records
Data is king if you want to determine if your flock is productive, and the financially viability of your farm.
Without poultry records your farming business would be the stuff of guesswork. As a result, you would have no way of knowing your bird stock, egg production and financial returns, if any.
How keep poultry records
There are many options by which you can keep poultry records. To begin with, paper and pen can suffice. However, it is worth considering using apps purposely built for the purpose, for reasons discussed below.
Various ways by which you can keep poultry records:
- Paper
- Custom book / pdf printouts e.g. from Etsy, Amazon, and them
- Desktop software, self customizable apps e.g. Excel
- Dedicated poultry management web software
- Mobile apps
Using apps to keep poultry records
If you are running a small to medium poultry farm, we recommend using a mobile app to do record keeping. Below are some reasons why we think a mobile app would be suitable for you, for the purpose.
Suitability for poultry record keeping
There are several flock management and record keeping apps purposely built to simplify poultry farming.
Using apps dedicated to flock management and record keeping can enable you to track the performance of your flocks easily than on paper or even spreadsheet applications.
Kukufarm, our poultry management app does these and much more. Get it from Google Play or App Store.
Additionally, flock management and record keeping apps purposely built for poultry farmers are likely to have useful and valuable features and functionality. For instance Kukufarm supports
- Coop and flock management
- Mortality rate tracking
- Vaccination schedule management
- Egg production rate tracking
- Financial performance tracking
- Sharing a poultry farm with co-owners and farm managers
All these can be viewed by day, week, month and to date, enabling a you to quickly see your flock’s performance. Furthermore, it will enable you to implement data based farming interventions and practices.
Immediacy of logging flock records
Every poultry farmer should consider keeping their flock’s records through a mobile application, mostly due to the immediacy in which record entries and record viewing can be made.
A farmer can make records as farming activities are noted, or done. For instance,
- When they are in the coop
- While in the market making sales or purchases
- Or while they are on the go
Along this line, Kukufarm app touts itself as putting a poultry farm in the farmer’s pocket. In contrast, using a web or desktop application to keep flock records makes the process effortful and even forgettable.
Poultry records sharing
Some flock management and record keeping apps, such as Kukufarm (which should be out soon), support the sharing of poultry farms with co-owners or farm managers. This enables different people in a farm to enter and view respective flock records, further simplifying record keeping and sharing.
Data based consultations
Using a poultry management and record keeping app simplifies poultry consultation. The farmer can take their flock records to consultations with veterinaries or respective flock supplier.
Future features and support
Smartphone applications usually get updated with new features and bug fixes. This makes them an ideal tool for flock management and record keeping.
While using such apps, a farmer can in most cases be sure to get continued feature support and maintenance. As a result a farmer can focus on their farming practices as such apps would provide required record keeping functionality.
Key takeaways
- Keeping poultry records is an essential part of poultry farming
- Logging flock data enables you to track their performance
- You can keep flock records by various means including on paper
- Poultry management and record keeping apps may be best tools for the purpose
Also see 5 Best practices how to keep accurate poultry records.