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 grading.

Grading

When you sort a day's eggs, choose Grade eggs and split the day's collected total into grades - for example small, medium, large, cracked, and dirty. The grading total must match the eggs you collected that day.

If the flock has an active egg withdrawal, grading is blocked until it clears.

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 grading view with the percentage by grade and the trend over time.
• A withdrawal calendar showing which lots cannot be graded today 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