record keeping

[joe17]

I will breed silkies in the future and want to know how you keep and write down records. I was thinking about using a book for each of my pens. I only have two breeding pens though and a grow out pen. Do you put pictures of your breeding stock and chicks in your journal?

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

I have a binder that I use to keep records. I record each birds hatch date, mothers bands, fathers bands, color, breeder, the birds wing and leg bands, notes about the bird as it grows, etc. I keep my buffs in one section and the new bbs silkies will have their own section.

 

[cochinman2005]

Excel spreadsheets. I track each by breed/variety/pen number, and I also have separate tabs that identify which birds are used for which breeding pen.

For instance:
Black Cochins
Pen # Sire Dam
1 09122 08403

Where 09122 equates to band #122 hatched in 2009 and 08403 equates to band #403 hatched in 2008.

 

[Doug the Chicken Man]

I created a access database for this purpose. It inclues pictures aswell as the abiltiy to do a pedigree chart manually form the records.

You may want to see the following thread BYS will be having a flock managemetn software added to the site.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=283641&p=27