Today’s poultry farmers have many modern advances at their fingertips, more so even than just a decade ago. From digital brooder thermometers and computerized incubators to automatic chicken feeders and programmable coop lighting, technology—from apps to hardware—has changed the face of how we manage our chickens.
Backyard poultry owners may not have the same gadget and gear needs as those farmers with small flocks and hobby farms. But one thing all chicken keepers need is a method to manage their birds.
While a notebook or ledger remains a time-tested manner to do so, a smartphone app allows poultry keepers to easily add and modify flock information, keep track of egg production, and keep tabs on much more information about their chickens. Plus they can provide the convenience of having all this information at your fingertips.
Here are four poultry-management apps to consider to help you manage your backyard chickens.
Flockstar
Flockstar focuses on data tracking for the single backyard flock. Create a profile for each of your chickens, including their name, age, gender, breed, hatch date and photo, then track their egg laying by day, week, month or year.
Flockstar allows you to keep notes on egg weights, damaged eggs and unusable eggs like wind eggs and soft-shelled eggs. There’s even a leaderboard that identifies your flock’s top layers.
Flockstar also continually connects to the cloud, so there’s no worry about losing your data because of a missed manual back up. Flockstar offers a paid upgrade which adds the ability to:
- track multiple flocks
- manage expenses, sales, vendors and customers
- keep a journal with notes, photos and tags
Developed by Late Shift Digital, LLC.
123Poultry
Designed for the cottage-industry flock keeper, 123Poultry helps you keep tabs on your farm’s financial performance. Track your income, expenses and sales via easy-to-read tables, graphs and logs.
Determine each bird’s feed intake and body-weight development to learn which of your breeds are the most feed efficient. Record important flock details, including each bird’s laying percentage, percentage of damaged eggs and total eggs laid.
You can even record which of your birds are active, which have been sold and which have died. The app’s Knowledge Center, which offers tips on farming and management practices, is a huge bonus.
Developed by Champrix.
ChookBook
The app for microflock owners who want a simple, uncomplicated way of keeping track of their chickens, ChookBook features a colorful, easy-to-use interface that focuses on your flock’s individual birds. Each hen has her own page, featuring her photo and details such as her color, gender, breed and hatch date.
If she is actively laying, toggle the Active switch. Then, for each day, record which bird lays an egg.
ChookBook imports this data into a bar graph that indicates your flock’s egg production for the week. If you’d like to keep track of whether you’ve watered or wormed your flock or cleaned their coop, ChookBook provides sections where these can be recorded.
Developed by Gustavo Costa de Oliveira.
Count Your Eggs
If all you want to do is keep track of your flock’s egg productivity, Count Your Eggs is the app for you. There are no profile pages for your hens. There is no place to record feed or water intake, hatching rates, individual layer percentages or other flock details.
Unlike some of the more intensive apps, all Count Your Eggs does is track how many eggs your chickens lay each day.
This data is tabulated into a graph showing your flock’s productivity over a week, month, quarter year, half year, year and two years. You can search My Egg History for a specific date to see how many eggs were laid that day. You can also edit your totals in case you miss a day or one of your hens lays late in the afternoon.
Developed by RoleModel Software, Inc.
