Managing your chicken business

[Morning Dove]

I'm not sure where this post should go exactly, but I'm wondering what tools people are using to keep track of their chicken buisness, weither it's selling eggs, selling chicks, selling fertile eggs, or chickens for meat. What free resources are available? How do you keep track of the cost of raising your chickens, and how do you decide how to price your chicken products?

Dove

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
Would be interested in these answers, also.

I intend to just keep a ledger on expenses, other than that I have no clue

meri

 

[Colored Egg Farmer]

I do a lot of things for my chicken business.

baby chicks is just keep track of how many I sold.

Egg on the other hand which is my main product have a lot of things being followed. I keep track by the month of my expenses and sales and see how much I made/lost that month. For selling chickens I have to keep track of the expenses, age, and then at the time of selling I total all expenses and figure out the price. I use Quick books which came free on this computer to keep track of everything.

 

[ninny]

once i get mine up and going i plan on keeping detailed records of everything. quick books are good and software for breeding records are also available.

http://www.zooeasy.com

 

[Chickending]

I have created my own excel spreadsheets, I enter my costs, how many eggs I collect and sell, the meat birds everything is tracked and the formulas are entered in excel so it does all the calculations. That is what I do.

 

[Tikkajazz94]

Quote:
I look at it and it looks like a good program,
I hope it is one,

I hope you have fun with it

 

[Pumpkinpup]

I plan on starting a ledger at the beginning of the new year

 

[wyliefarms]

My daughter has the chicken business in the family.

I gave her a check ledger to keep track of income and expenses.

Things are going good. She has another chunk of money to deposit in the bank after purchasing feed today

 

[dreamgirl]

Quote:
Chickending--would you be willing to share? -- I have never figured out how to create Excell spreadsheets, but I can fill in #s!

Thanks.

Currently I use a really simple method--each day on my wall calandar I note how many eggs they lay and how many I sold. we eat and give away alot so the numbers obviously don't match. At the end of the month I put the total $ amount at the top of the page. I put all the reciepts for chicken expenses in a folder and at the end of the year add them up. Then I add up each month's sales and hope that number is greater ... Since I currently have 21 hens and am only getting 5-7 eggs (cold, dark, molting...), if I compared expenses to sales each month instead of yearly, there might be some homeless hens out there

 

[Leah-yes I know I'm crazy]

Quote:
Chickending--would you be willing to share? -- I have never figured out how to create Excell spreadsheets, but I can fill in #s!

Thanks.

Currently I use a really simple method--each day on my wall calandar I note how many eggs they lay and how many I sold. we eat and give away alot so the numbers obviously don't match. At the end of the month I put the total $ amount at the top of the page. I put all the reciepts for chicken expenses in a folder and at the end of the year add them up. Then I add up each month's sales and hope that number is greater ... Since I currently have 21 hens and am only getting 5-7 eggs (cold, dark, molting...), if I compared expenses to sales each month instead of yearly, there might be some homeless hens out there

Here is a link to free online tutorial for excell from microsoft to get you started. It is a very simple logical program once you know what you can expect out of the program and how to get it done.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102189871033.aspx