Ostriches and rheas

What the app keeps for your ratites

Every breeder has its own record. The app assigns it a number and you enter the name, breed, sex, birth date and category; if you use rings, you can put the ring number in the name. There are no ratite-specific categories, so the ostrich, the rhea and the emu are recorded the same way. With your registered animals you set up groups: the breeding trios or pairs, the rearing chicks and the finishing birds. Every registered animal counts towards the free plan’s limit of 50. The rearing chicks can also be a group counted by quantity, a running total that does not count towards that limit.

• Eggs in units. The quick log takes the eggs in a few seconds, for the whole farm, one hen or one group. On the free plan you see today’s total and the last 7 days; monthly and three-month totals are on the Pro plan.
• Weights. You note each chick’s weight when you weigh it and the app works out the average daily gain between weighings. On the Pro plan it projects when the bird will reach a fixed target weight of 100 kg, close to an ostrich’s slaughter weight. For rheas and emus, which weigh much less, that projection is no use.
• Meat in kilos. The kilos from each slaughter are logged with the quick log, for the whole farm or for the group they came from.
• Health. On the Pro plan you keep vaccinations, dewormings and treatments with product, batch, dose, vet and cost, with the withdrawal countdown for meat.
• Accounts. The sale of an animal, recorded on its record, is booked as income for that animal. Feed, pens, the incubator and sales of eggs, meat, hides or feathers are recorded as expenses and income, with a category and a description, and assigned to the whole farm, to one animal or to one group.

Animals, weights, eggs, meat, accounts, assigning them to an animal or a group, and up to 2 groups are on the free plan. The balance per animal and per group, health records, the weight projection and monthly production totals are on the Pro plan.

What the app does not do

There is no incubation calculator and no record of each egg in the incubator. The app adds up the eggs you log, for the farm, a hen or a group, but not the ones that hatch. If you incubate, set a reminder for candling or for the expected hatch date, and register the chicks that hatch: one by one as new animals (each one counts towards the free plan’s limit of 50) or as births in a group counted by quantity.

A laying season, properly counted

Ostrich hens lay by season, and the number varies a lot from one hen to another. If you log each trio’s eggs to its group, you see which trio performs best: on the Pro plan each group’s record shows its production over the last 30 days and its income, expenses and balance. For the whole farm you get the egg total (month by month on the Pro plan) and, adding up feed and other costs, what each egg you sell or incubate costs you on average.