As a poultry farmer, practicing data based or smart poultry farming is important to maximizing your farm’s output. Furthermore, it is key to the sustainability of your poultry farm’s business.
Essentially, data based poultry farming means that you rely on data to make flock management decisions and to refine your farming practices. For example the chart below compares egg production costs in cage and aviary poultry systems.
As a rule of thumb, you cannot improve what you do not measure. In order to run a successful poultry farming operation, you need to make informed decisions. For instance consider if you would want to answer the following questions with actual data or not:
- What is the benchmark mortality rate of your poultry breed?
- What is the best poultry system?
- Which chicken breed has the highest egg production rate?
In this article we discuss data based poultry farming and what it entails. Moreover, we present the benefits and what it takes for you to become a smart poultry farmer.
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What is data based or smart poultry farming
Data based poultry farming is the practice of tracking flock performance over time with the intention of using said data to improve farming practices. Moreover, smart poultry farming aims to use insights from flock records to maximize flock yield.
As a result, data based poultry farming involves at least these 4 aspects:
- Tracking flock performance over time
- Understanding flock performance over time
- Improving and refining farming practices based on flock data
- Maximizing flock yields
Inevitably, data based poultry farming makes you a smart farmer. Since you have data and make your decisions based on the data, you become a smart farmer in the process.
Want to measure the egg production rate of your flock? Get Kukufarm from Google Play or App Store and start practicing data based poultry farming today.
What is flock performance data
In poultry farming, flock performance data refers to the flock data collected over time, to measure flock productivity.
Basic flock performance data should include the following:
- Flock liveability and mortality rates
- Egg production rate
- Weight gain
- Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR)
- Financial yield
Flock performance data is an essential component practicing smart poultry farming. Without it, you have to practice guesswork farming which as we have said repeatedly is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you do not need to jump into the deep end at first. You can ease your way into keeping flock records and collect data that you can easily understand and act upon. Afterwards, you can get into advanced flock performance indicators such as FCR.
Benefits of practicing data based / smart poultry farming
Unfortunately, many small to medium scale have long neglected data based farming for various reasons. In some cases, you do not know the value of doing so, and in others you do not know where to start. Nonetheless, the benefits of data based poultry farming outweight guesswork farming. These are:
- You understand flock performance over time
- Eliminate guesswork from your farming operation
- Make informed farming decisions based on flock data
- Become a smart farmer
With an poultry app like Kukufarm, becoming a smart farmer is simple and straightforward. Even with the FREE version you can do so much including: tracking flock mortality, expenses, egg production rate and auto-schedule vaccinations.
How to practice data based poultry farming
The steps are simple really. In our view, you just need to do 2 things to get started, this we present below. Essentially, these 2 things will make you a smart poultry farmer.
Track and understand flock performance over time
The first step to practicing data based poultry farming is tracking and understanding flock performance over time.
Without tracking and understanding flock performance over time, you cannot practice smart poultry farming. Moreover, remember that you cannot improve what you do not measure. Since the whole idea of data based poultry farming is to use data to refine your farming operations, keeping flock data is a given.
However, it is not enough to keep flock records. In addition, you’ve to understand what that data says about your flock performance. Therefore, keeping flock records in a format that is easy to understand and act upon is super important.
Kukufarm poultry management is built with this in mind; to help you understand the data you collect about your flocks. Firstly, data is presented with simple charts that enable you to see patterns over time. Secondly, you can view flock data at whatever detail you wish: day, week, month and all time.
Make flock management decision based on flock performance data
Once you’ve collected and and understand flock data over time, it is natural to act upon. That is, to make flock management decisions based on insights from the data.
For instance, say you have 2 coops in your farm, both using the deep litter system. However, from the flock data, you see that one coop has lower egg production rate than the other. Such insights will naturally make you want to investigate the conditions in that coop, and figure out what the differences are.
This is where the magic of data based poultry farming comes in. Essentially, you investigating your flock management in order to maximize flock yield. In this case, to increase egg production rate to match the other coop, or both to match flock benchmark.
And that is just the beginning, once you’ve flock data and insights from that data, you will have multiple points of flock management investigation and improvements.
Naturally, this will put you at the forefront of successful farming, since you will always be improving your farming practices and optimizing coop conditions.