Poultry & Dairy Farm Management
Flock-wise feed, mortality and FCR, or animal-wise milk and breeding — the two numbers that decide whether a cycle made money.
A poultry farm is a sequence of short, unforgiving cycles. Chicks placed, feed consumed daily, mortality counted every morning, and at the end a weight sold to a beopari. Whether the batch made money comes down to feed conversion, and that is a figure most farms only calculate after the shed is empty — when it is too late to change anything about it.
Dairy is the opposite shape: long cycles, per animal. Milk recorded morning and evening, lactation and dry periods, breeding and calving dates, and a feed cost that has to be judged against an individual animal's yield rather than against the herd. The two businesses are different enough that the build is shaped around whichever one you run, and only shares a system where a farm genuinely does both.
What it fixes
- Daily mortality and feed written on a shed board and transferred to a register later, so feed conversion is only known after the batch closes
- Feed cost per batch unknown while it matters, which is precisely when a decision could still be made
- Vaccination and medication schedules kept on paper per shed, with a missed dose found out by its consequences
- Sale to a beopari by weight with a handful of vehicles weighed over two days, reconciled afterwards from slips
- In dairy, milk recorded as a herd total, so a consistently low yielder is subsidised by the rest for years
- Breeding, insemination and calving dates remembered rather than recorded, so a long open period is noticed late
What gets built
A starting point, not a fixed list. The build is scoped to your own process before anything is written.
Flock and batch records
Day-old chicks placed per shed with date and source, daily mortality and culls, running bird count, and the batch closed with what was actually sold.
Feed and FCR
Feed received, consumed per shed per day, and feed conversion calculated as the batch runs rather than after it ends — with cost per kilogram of live weight as the figure to judge the cycle on.
Health schedules
Vaccination and medication plan per batch with due dates, what was administered and by whom, and medicine stock drawn down as it is used.
Weight and sales
Weight sampling through the cycle, and sale by vehicle with gross, tare and net weight against a party, so the batch's realisation is recorded as it is sold rather than totalled later.
Dairy animal register
Where dairy is involved: animal-wise identity, lactation number, breeding and insemination record, calving and dry-off dates, and health history.
Milk production and sale
Morning and evening yield per animal, daily and monthly totals, and sale to a dodhi, chiller or shop with rate, fat where it is paid on, and the party account.
Who this is for
Commercial poultry farms running multiple sheds — broiler or layer — and dairy farms from roughly thirty or forty animals upwards, where records are already being kept but only reconciled after the fact. It suits an operation with a supervisor who will enter daily figures, because the entire value is in the daily entry. A backyard setup, or a farm with a handful of animals, will get nothing from this that a notebook does not already give. Mixed farms doing both poultry and dairy can share one system, but be aware they are two different models underneath and building both is roughly two builds.
Questions
Who enters the daily figures, and what if they do not?
The shed supervisor or farm manager, from a phone, every day. If that does not happen the system produces nothing useful, because feed conversion from a week of estimated figures is worse than no figure at all. It is worth deciding before you build whether there is someone who will genuinely do it daily — that is the real precondition, not the software.
Can it connect to our feed silo or milking machine?
Depends on the equipment. Some milking parlours and feed systems record per-animal or per-shed data and can be read or imported; most installations here do not have that and the figures are entered manually. Automatic milk meters exist but they are a significant capital item in their own right. We would need the make and model, and confirmation from the supplier, before including any of it in scope.
Will it tell us the best time to sell the batch?
It will tell you your cost per kilogram as the batch runs and what feed conversion is doing, which is the information that decision needs. It will not predict market rates, and we would be wary of any software that claims to. The judgement stays with you; the system removes the guesswork about your own costs.
Tell us how your farm runs.
We scope it first — what it takes, how long, what it costs. No obligation.