Raising layers

A layer flock is saved as a Lot in PoultryDesk. It is a group of pullets or hens placed into one or more houses and tracked from placement through peak production to depopulation. You can always see hen-day production, mortality, feed per egg, and the daily egg count.

Before you start

Make sure your site and houses exist, and that you have birds to place - either purchased point-of-lay pullets or birds transferred from a rearing lot.

Place the lot

Open Layers, choose New placement, then:

1. Pick the site and house or houses.
2. Enter the bird count, the breed or strain, the age at placement, and the placement date.
3. Submit.

This opens a new layer flock, labelled as a Lot in the app.

Daily flock records

Open the flock and record the day's work. Each entry can be made more than once a day.

• Egg collection - choose Collect eggs and enter the count for each house. Record every collection; the lot totals them for the day.
• Mortality - choose Record mortality, enter the count and an optional cause.
• Feed used - choose Record feed used, pick the feed item, and enter the quantity. This draws the feed down from your inventory.
• Treatments - record medications under the Health module. Some treatments start an egg withdrawal that affects collection and keeps those eggs out of saleable stock.

Grading

Grading is a site-level inventory job because eggs from the site's layer flocks are normally mixed before sorting. Open Inventory > Stock > On hand, open the site's Eggs row, and choose Grade eggs. Split the available ungraded pool into small, medium, large, cracked, and dirty quantities. You can also identify the production system when a site keeps organic, free-range, barn, deep-litter, or cage eggs separately.

The grading total cannot exceed the site's ungraded eggs on hand. PoultryDesk consumes that ungraded stock and adds the graded eggs to the site's saleable inventory. Per-flock production reporting still comes from collection; PoultryDesk does not invent a flock origin after eggs have been mixed.

Correct a placement

Before closeout, a manager can correct the placement facts - bird count, site or house, placement date - by editing the placement. PoultryDesk records the correction rather than overwriting the original, so the history stays intact. A correction is blocked once the lot is closed, or if the corrected count would fall below the birds already removed by mortality.

Close out the lot

When the flock is depopulated or transferred out, choose Close out lot. Closeout is blocked while the lot still has live birds - record the residual mortality or harvest first.

What you get

• A flock dashboard showing hens alive, hen-day production percentage, daily egg count, cumulative mortality percentage, feed consumption, and feed per egg.
• A site eggs view showing ungraded, graded, and withheld quantities plus recent grading movements.
• A withdrawal calendar showing which lots have eggs or meat held back and until when.
• Feed and medication usage by flock in the inventory ledger, and a full flock timeline in the audit trail.

See also

• Recording data without a signal
• Raising broilers
• Running a hatchery