Handbook: running a quail operation with QuailBreeder

1.What QuailBreeder is — and what it is not

QuailBreeder is a tool for people who hatch, raise and sell quail. It carries the whole operation in one unbroken chain — from egg to invoice — and turns the scraps you jot down every day anyway into numbers you can plan with. This chapter tells you what the application takes on and what it deliberately does not do, so that after ten minutes of reading you know whether it suits your farm.

The full circle: from egg to invoice

The application follows the cycle your birds go through anyway. Every phase has a screen, and every phase passes its numbers on to the next.

Phase	What you enter	What the application makes of it
Incubation	eggs per batch, machine, trays; with a separate setter, also the planned hatching trays	counts the days, reminds you of the transfer day, tracks how full every machine is
Hatching	incubator, tray number, chicks hatched, destination brooder	calculates the viability rate as the ratio of chicks hatched to eggs set
Rearing	daily losses, notes on changes to feed and climate	records the loss curve per batch, warns of overcrowding
Fattening	the location and cages occupied on that day	tracks stock and consumption down to the location
Slaughter	slaughter sheet or processing order	doubles as the sales order and as the basis for the invoice
Sale	invoice from the template	archives the batch automatically as soon as no birds remain in it

The same tools run through every phase: a picture of how full your incubators, brooders and cages are and what is still free; reminders as a push message or as an entry in your calendar (iCloud, Google Calendar); a mortality analysis that records every loss by date, time and cage or location; and invoice templates that you can design yourself and that support clickable links.

Everything comes down to one figure, the viability rate: the share of what you put into the incubator that ends up standing there as a living, saleable bird. It is kept per batch, and that is exactly why it can be compared — between machines, seasons and parent birds.

Who this is for

From the backyard to the small business. The application grew out of exactly such an operation: a backyard quail farm that after two years was at around 50 kg of meat per week — with 14 to 15 overlapping batches and more than 3,000 birds at various stages. That is also the order of magnitude the controls are designed for: short procedures, large buttons, an undo button for the mistyped entry made with cold fingers.

The application is built for the phone and nothing else, as a native iOS app, because the numbers of a farm are made in the barn, not at a desk. You record a hatch with wet hands and three seconds of attention.

QuailBreeder is a program for iPhone and iPad. A web version is currently in the works — it runs in the browser and therefore also on Android devices. I am inviting testers: write to info@quailbreeder.net and you will get access. Until then, recording happens on an iOS device — which need not be a drawback in practice, as long as that device comes with you into the shed.

What it deliberately does not do

It does not control an incubator. You set temperature, humidity and turning interval on the machine, as before. The application keeps the incubation schedule, not the incubator.
It does not measure anything itself. No sensors are involved; all values come from you or from the display of your machine. A number you do not enter does not exist as far as the application is concerned.
It does not replace a vet. Loss recording shows you when and where animals are lost, and that is worth a great deal when you are looking for causes. It is not a diagnosis. If you suspect disease, see unusual losses or notice changes in behaviour, ask your vet.
It does not advise on legal questions. Whether and where you have to register your stock, which records you must keep and what applies to the sale of meat and eggs — the rules differ from state to state and from district to district. Ask your own authority before you write your first sales order.
It is not a corporate ERP with a bird icon. Warehousing, accounting and personnel are not its subject; batches, stock and the invoice that comes out of them are.

Whether the tool suits you

It suits you if you run more than one batch at a time, if you want to know why one batch went worse than the last, and if you no longer want to type up the pile of paper in the evening. It suits you less if you are following a single hen with a handful of eggs, or if you are after barn automation — it is not built for that.

The next step is filling in the three catalogues. That is the next chapter, and it takes about ten minutes.

2.Ready in ten minutes — incubators, brooders, locations

Before you create your first batch, you fill three catalogues with the equipment you actually use: incubators, brooders and locations. You will find this in the Home tab under Settings; the application guides you through it. For a typical backyard operation it takes about ten minutes.

These ten minutes are the price for everything that runs by itself afterwards. Only once the application knows your machines and boxes can it count, warn and plan: it can check how many eggs fit in the machine you have chosen, it can warn you on hatch day about an overcrowded brooder, and it can show you in one overview which device is currently occupied and which is free. Without catalogues it remains a notebook.

Catalogue	What you specify	What the application needs it for
Incubators	type, number of trays, egg capacity per tray, incubation days of the machine	capacity check when a batch is created, distribution across the trays, occupancy per machine
Brooders	the maximum number of chicks and the number of days they stay	warning of overcrowding as early as hatch day, the date for moving them on
Locations	purpose, cages with their capacity, number of days birds stay	capacity check when moving birds in, the date they are ready for slaughter, clean allocation of the figures

The incubators

The application knows the three classic designs, and the distinction is not a formality — it decides whether you need a transfer day or not.

The setter holds the eggs during the main incubation period and turns them regularly.
The hatcher takes them over for the last few days, in which the eggs lie still until the chicks hatch.
The combined machine does both jobs in one cabinet.

For each incubator you enter the number of trays and the egg capacity of each tray. That is precisely the basis of the planning: when you create a batch, the application checks how many eggs fit in the machine you have chosen and helps with the distribution across the trays. If you use a separate setter and hatcher, it also reminds you to define the hatching trays for the transfer day.

If you own several machines of different sizes, enter them all. The number of incubators is not limited, and occupancy is tracked separately for each machine — so you know before you collect the eggs which cabinet still has free trays.

Each machine also carries its own number of incubation days, and the list shows it: "Setter for 15 days, 4 trays". The defaults are 15 days in the setter, 3 days in the hatcher and 18 days in a combination machine — both routes therefore add up to the same total. If your machine differs, change the number on the incubator; every date for your batches is then calculated from it. Occupancy is shown on the machine as a figure and a share ("120 out of 420 (29 %)") and below that for each tray separately. The interface calls the tray a Tray throughout, in the setter as in the hatcher — it is one and the same object.

In practice: What to think about when buying or setting up an incubator. First, fresh air: the embryo breathes through the shell, so the cabinet needs an air inlet and must stand in a room that is itself ventilated — a sealed cabinet in a cramped storage room slowly suffocates the batch. Second, even temperature: what matters is not the value on the display, but how small the difference between the top and the bottom tray turns out to be; forced-air machines are more reliable in this than pure still-air incubators, and every machine belongs in a place without draughts, without direct sun and without a radiator beside it. Your own tested thermometer in the cabinet is the cheapest insurance there is. Third, the turning mechanism: it has to be quiet, gentle and above all reliable, and you must be able to switch it off for the hatching phase. Finally, check whether the trays are designed for quail eggs — inserts for chicken eggs do not hold the small eggs securely.

The brooders

A brooder — that is what the interface calls it — is the warm nursery for the first weeks after the hatch. You give two numbers: how many chicks it can safely take, and how long the chicks stay in it ("Stay in the brooder (Days)"). The first number produces the warning about overcrowding, the second the date on which the application reminds you to move the birds on.

That is not a formality. Overcrowding in the first two weeks is one of the most common and at the same time most easily avoided causes of early losses. If a hatch turns out larger than expected, the temptation is great to squeeze everything into one box for a few days. If you have entered honest capacities, you can see on hatch day itself whether the chicks will fit — and prepare a second brooder in good time instead of improvising at midnight.

The locations

Locations are groups of cages for a particular purpose. Three are typical: cages for the parent birds, cages for egg production and cages for fattening. A location can be a cage rack, a whole room or a single large aviary — what matters is the purpose, not the geometry.

Thinking in purposes pays off later: egg counts are collected per egg-production location, feed and growth are recorded where the birds being fattened live, and the breeding stock keeps its own history. If you move birds from a brooder into a location, the application knows what these animals are intended for, and the statistics stay clean.

Capacity is kept twice over here: every cage has its own, and the location carries the sum. To that is added the length of stay in days ("Stay in the cages (Days)"), from which the application works out the day the stock is ready for slaughter. The settings show the total capacity of all locations in birds and that of all brooders in chicks — the fastest answer to the question of whether another batch will fit at all.

Little is needed to start

Do not aim for a complete setup on the first day. One incubator, one brooder, one location — with that you take a small batch from beginning to end and refine the catalogues afterwards. Only with the numbers should you be exact from the outset: measure the trays and count the cage space properly once. The application's warnings are only as honest as the capacities you give it.

3.Setting eggs — batch, turning schedule, trays

The batch is the unit the application thinks in. Every number that comes later — hatch, losses, feed, invoice — hangs on the batch you are starting now. That is why it is worth making the few entries carefully when you set the eggs.

How a batch comes about

In the tab bar select Batch and enter the number of eggs for this batch. After that:

If you want to create a batch retroactively, click the date above the quantity. That is only possible as long as the eggs have not yet been placed in the incubator.
If you use a setter, also define the trays in the hatcher — the hatching trays planned for the later transfer day.
Assign the eggs to the trays. From the catalogue the application knows the egg capacity of each tray and helps with the distribution.
Mistyped? Undo deletes the last action.
Once the eggs are distributed, press Start. The incubation is then running, and the application counts the days.

Whether you are reminded of the transfer day and the hatch day is decided in Settings in the Home tab. The choice is between push notifications and automatically created entries in your preferred calendar. Both together are the habit that in practice saves the most eggs: trusting the reminders instead of your own mental arithmetic.

Setter and hatcher working together

If you work with a combined machine, the batch stays in the same cabinet from beginning to end. With separate machines there is a break in the process, and that is exactly what the application maps: when you created the batch you already said which trays in the hatcher are intended for it, and you are reminded of it on the transfer day. On hatch day you then choose the incubator and tray number, enter the number of chicks hatched and state which brooder they go into. From this number and the eggs set comes your first key figure, the viability rate.

In practice: Incubation days, warmth, humidity, turning. Quail eggs generally need 16 to 18 days, mostly around 17; breed, egg age and cabinet temperature shift that by a day in either direction. In practice the main incubation period is run at about 37.5 to 37.8 degrees and the hatching phase a shade cooler; relative humidity during incubation is usually in the range of 45 to 55 percent and is raised to about 65 to 75 percent for the hatch, so that the membranes do not turn leathery. During the main incubation period the eggs are turned several times a day — three to five times is enough, and an odd number ensures that the eggs do not lie on the same side every night. About two to three days before the calculated hatch, turning is stopped; that is the moment when the eggs are transferred to the hatcher. Follow the instructions for your machine as you do so: the ranges given are values from experience, not a regulation, and every cabinet has its own character. Why fresh air counts during this time is explained by the shell itself: it is not airtight but permeated by thousands of microscopically small pores — between 7,000 and 17,000 — which allow free gas exchange between the inside of the egg and its surroundings. The embryo breathes through these pores. Stale air in the cabinet costs you chicks, and neither thermometer nor hygrometer shows anything.

What the application keeps track of

A clear boundary is worth drawing here, so that you do not go looking for fields that do not exist: the application does not record temperature, humidity or turning frequency. You set those values on the machine, and that is where they belong — typed a second time into a phone they would be no more than a claim about the cabinet.

What the application does keep are quantities, containers and days: which eggs lie in which tray of which machine, with separate machines the trays earmarked in the hatcher, and from that the day count. The reminders grow out of it, including the one that touches the turning schedule: "Turn off auto-turner". The application does not intervene in the machine; it makes sure you remember at the right hour.

On naming: setter and hatcher hold the same kind of container, and the interface calls it a Tray throughout. "Tray" and "hatching tray" therefore mean one and the same object — only at different points along the route.

In practice: It is decided before setting. The application names two main factors for hatching success, and both lie before the start button: the age of the bird that laid the hatching egg, and the quality of the incubator, in particular its fresh-air supply. On age: very young hens initially lay small eggs with poor hatching performance; usable hatching eggs generally only come some weeks after laying begins, and as the parent birds get older the fertility rate declines again. On storage: hatching eggs age faster than you think. Store them cool and shaded, well below room temperature, but not in the refrigerator; after about a week the hatch rate falls noticeably, so it is better to set smaller batches more often. Keep the eggs lying down or with the pointed end downwards and tilt them slightly once a day, so that the germ does not stick. On cleanliness: do not set heavily soiled eggs at all, and do not wash hatching eggs — the shell carries a natural protective layer, and wash water pushes germs inwards through exactly those pores through which the embryo breathes. Cleanliness is worked out at the source: collect frequently, dry bedding, clean nest boxes.

Two rules that save your statistics

Record events immediately and on the spot — eggs set, chicks hatched, losses in the brooder. A number that is noted down two days later is an estimate, and estimates ruin the viability statistics. And use the undo button without shame: deleting the last action takes a second and keeps your history truthful.

Once the first batch is running, the rest is routine: record the hatch day, chicks into the brooder, enter losses daily. What comes after that is in the next chapter.

4.Hatch day: recording, moving, the first key figure

Hatch day is the first day in the cycle on which you can count something that is no longer an egg. Everything before it was planning; now you get the first number you can work with. In the application the whole process takes less than a minute — provided you record it where it happens and not in the evening at the kitchen table.

What you enter on this day

QuailBreeder reminds you of the hatch date if you have set that up: by push notifications on the device, by a connected calendar or by both. The settings for it are in the "Home" tab under "Settings".

The entry itself consists of three details:

Choose the incubator and tray number. You tell the application which machine and which tray the chicks come from. If you run several machines, this is the point that later allows machines to be compared with one another.
Enter the number of chicks hatched. What is counted is what is alive and on its feet, not what has pipped.
State the brooder the chicks are put into. This tells the application where these animals live from now on — and because you entered the capacity of every brooder during setup, you can see on hatch day itself whether the arriving number really fits in there. If the hatch turns out larger than expected, you learn that before you have to improvise, and not afterwards.

A mistyped entry with cold fingers is no drama: the last action can be deleted with "Undo".

On naming: the interface knows only one word for the container in the cabinet — Tray. Whether it sits in the setter or in the hatcher changes nothing about that; the number you pick on hatch day is the number of that tray. The rearing place is called a Brooder in the interface.

The first key figure: the viability rate

As soon as the hatch is recorded, you get your first key performance indicator. The viability rate is calculated as the ratio of the chicks hatched to the number of eggs set for incubation.

An example: 200 eggs set, 148 chicks hatched — that is 74 percent. There is nothing more in the number than that, and that is precisely its strength. It is hard to dress up, because the denominator is fixed before anything has happened.

What the number does not say. It does not measure the fertility rate. An egg that was never fertilised and an egg whose embryo died in the second half of incubation look the same in this calculation: both were set and neither produced a chick. A low value alone is therefore not yet a diagnosis. It tells you that you have to search — not where. To separate the two you have to candle the eggs during incubation and note the unfertilised ones separately; only then can it be said whether the problem lies with the parent birds or in the incubator.

Just as little does the number say anything about how many of these chicks come through the next few weeks. That is the task of rearing and the subject of the next chapter.

There is no separate field for unfertilised or dead eggs — and none is needed. If you enter fewer chicks than the eggs you set, the application asks about the remainder itself: "What about 37 eggs? — Add missing eggs to embrionic mortality records?" Say yes and the difference goes into this batch's list of losses as embryonic mortality, with the machine and tray as the place.

This is the most important moment of the whole hatch day. Say no and you have a batch whose figures do not add up: eggs that neither hatched nor were lost. So say yes even when the cause is unclear — unfertilised, dead in shell or broken can be told apart later from the note, but the figure itself has to be right.

In practice: What depresses a hatch rate in practice is mostly decided before the eggs are even in the machine. Hatching eggs age: within the first week after laying the results are generally the best, after that the rate falls noticeably — stored cool and turned slightly, it falls more slowly. Added to that is the age of the parent birds: very young and worn-out hens deliver the weaker eggs. In the incubator there are three things: a temperature that fluctuates or is permanently off; too little fresh air, because the embryo breathes through the shell and needs oxygen; and the lid that is opened too often in the last few days. Every opening during the hatching phase makes the humidity collapse, and the membrane that then dries around a half-hatched chick becomes a shackle it cannot get free of.

Afterwards

Enter the number while you are still standing in front of the incubator. A number that is noted from memory two days later is an estimate, and estimates ruin exactly the statistics you are using the application for. From the moment the chicks are sitting in the brooder, daily recording applies — hatch day is the beginning of the curve, not its conclusion.

5.Rearing: the first weeks and the daily record

Rearing decides what is left of the hatch. The key figure from the previous chapter — the viability rate — is no longer a snapshot but a task: holding it and raising it is the main work of these weeks. The application does not help with that by doing something for you, but by being able to show you afterwards what it was down to.

What is recorded daily

In QuailBreeder, rearing has two entries, and both belong to the same daily round through the barn:

The mortality of the chicks. Losses are recorded where they occur, and on the day on which they occur.
Notes on changes — nutrition, climate and whatever else was different from yesterday. A new batch of feed, a heat source turned down, a window that stood open overnight, a new drinker.

The second point looks like an accessory and is not. A loss figure alone only says that something has happened. Only the note beside it turns it into a cause. That is exactly what the field is for: the records of changes in nutrition, climate and the like make it easier to determine the cause.

Why daily and not weekly

Because an outlier only stands out if the curve is fine-grained enough. An example: you lose twelve chicks in one week. Noted weekly that is one number — twelve — and with some goodwill it can be read as normal early mortality. Noted daily, the same week may look like this: one, zero, one, eight, one, zero, one. The question is then no longer "am I losing too many chicks" but "what was different on that one day" — and that is answered by your note from exactly that day.

Weekly figures smooth that away. You do not lose the total, you lose the day. And the day is the only trail that leads to the cause.

The same applies to the time of day and the place. Record the loss in the brooder in which it occurred, not for the batch as a whole — otherwise it will not be possible later to distinguish whether a problem lies in the genetics, in the incubation or in your heating.

And record it immediately. A number that is noted two days later is an estimate. For a mistyped entry there is the undo button; for a patchy memory there is nothing.

In practice: Warmth in the first weeks. Usual is a start at about 35 to 37 °C under the heat source, then a reduction of roughly three degrees per week of life, until the animals get by at room temperature after about four to five weeks. These figures are a guide, not a recipe — your room, your lamp and your stocking density shift them. The real measure is the chicks themselves, and they say it clearly: if they crowd together tightly under the heat source, cheep shrilly and sleep on top of one another, it is too cold. If they flee to the edges, pant with open beaks and go into the corners with their wings spread, it is too warm. If they all sit on one side, there is a draught. It is right when the animals spread out freely and eat, drink and rest by turns — and do not all do the same thing at the same time. So offer a gradient: warmth on one side, a cooler area on the other. Chicks that are allowed to choose regulate the temperature more reliably than any thermometer.

In practice: Water and floor — the two beginner traps. Quail chicks are tiny at the hatch, and open water containers are deep for them. They drown in them, and they get chilled if they come out wet again. Use shallow drinkers, fill them only just, and in the first days put clean pebbles or marbles in them, so that the chicks can drink but cannot climb in. You need the same thought for the floor: on a smooth surface — newspaper, bare plastic, mesh with too wide a gauge — the legs find no grip, and splayed legs develop that can hardly be corrected later. Grippy, low-dust bedding or a non-slip cloth in the first days prevents that. Just as important: chicks go through every gap that is bigger than they are — check the corners, the cable openings and the gap under the wall of the box before the animals move in, not afterwards.

When the numbers cannot be explained

If losses accumulate with no recognisable trigger, or the animals show signs of disease — diarrhea, respiratory noises, ruffled feathers, paralysis — then that is not a case for the application, nor for a handbook. Turn to your vet. What the daily record gives you in that conversation is worth a great deal, however: the exact day on which it began, the number of animals affected and the list of what was changed in the days before.

Afterwards

When the animals no longer need the heat source and the brooder becomes too cramped, rearing ends and the stock moves into the cages. How that is recorded and what to bear in mind is in the next chapter.

6.Stock, cages and stocking density

At some point the animals no longer need a heat source and the brooder becomes too cramped. With that, rearing ends and the stock moves to where it stays until the end of the cycle: into the cages. In the application this is not a side step, but the moment at which it is decided what these animals are counted for.

Locations: cages with a purpose

In QuailBreeder a location is a group of cages for a particular purpose. Typical examples are cages for the parent birds, cages for egg production and cages for meat fattening. Whether that is a cage rack in the barn, a whole room or a single large aviary makes no difference — what matters is the purpose, not the geometry.

The reason for this division only shows later. Egg counts are collected per egg-production location, growth and feed are recorded where the birds being fattened live, and the breeding stock keeps its own history. When you move birds from a brooder into a location, the application knows from that what these birds are intended for — and the statistics stay separate instead of merging into an average from which nothing more can be read.

For the first cycle one location per purpose is enough. You can still subdivide later.

Moving the birds

Moving them into the cages runs via the task list of the batch: you choose "Fattening", state the location and fill the cages that are free on that day. At this point survival records can also be created.

So that the application can tell you what is free, it has to know what is full. That is exactly what the real-time capacity overview does: you see at once the current utilisation and availability of all critical equipment — incubators, brooders and cages — and can align the planning of the next batches with it. Anyone working with overlapping batches is not planning the incubation but the space that will be free in six weeks. This overview, however, is only as honest as the capacities you entered during setup. Measure properly once instead of estimating optimistically.

In the interface this unit is called a Batch, and this handbook calls it a batch throughout. Three routes out of a container are documented: from the brooder into the cages of a location, out of the cages into an order (slaughter and sale), and the takeover into the breeding stock — for which the application keeps a step of its own, "Breeding flock".

In practice: Space per animal. For quail raised for meat, about 100 to 150 cm² of floor area per animal is usually assumed in practice, for laying quail rather 150 to 200 cm² and more; breeding groups need additional space, because males and females sit together there. These ranges are values from experience, not a regulation — what applies legally is regulated differently by state and district, and you get the binding information from the responsible authority. More important than the exact figure is what crowding costs first. It is not the animals that die first, but the peace: feather pecking begins, high-ranking animals block the feeding place, and the losers avoid it. Shortly afterwards laying performance falls, the eggs become more uneven, and feed conversion gets worse, because part of the energy goes into stress and quarrelling. Losses through injuries come later — they are the end of a chain whose beginning you see in the feathers and in the egg count. Sufficient feeding and drinking places, dimmed light and calm groups are cheaper than any repair afterwards.

Counting cocks and hens separately

From the location onwards the application knows not only a headcount but also the split by sex: males and females can be entered separately both when birds are housed and when they leave. If you only fatten birds you do not need it and leave it empty. For everyone else it is the basis of two things that cannot otherwise be kept: the ratio of cocks to hens in the breeding stock, and the laying performance per hen — an egg count related to the whole flock instead of to the hens is worthless.

Sorting is done when the birds are moved out of the brooder, since then you have them in your hand one by one anyway. How to tell the sex of a quail is covered in the knowledge section.

Departures

In the cage too, what applied in rearing applies: every loss is recorded on the day on which it occurs. The application logs and analyses every loss by date, time and the specific cage or location — that is the point at which health risks can be narrowed down faster. A loss pattern that concentrates on a single cage is a different story from one that is spread across the whole location. And a pattern that always occurs at the same time of day points to something that happens at that time: feeding, sun on the barn wall, ventilation, noise. Without the time you never see it.

The planned departure is slaughter; it has its own chapter. When finally no birds remain in the batch, the batch is automatically transferred to the archive. Completed production batches thus disappear from the active dashboard but are retained as a record — you keep the overview of what is running and the comparability with what is past.

Selling live birds goes through the same order as slaughter: you choose the location, the cages and the number of birds, and the price is worked out either by weight or per bird. Taking birds over into the breeding stock is the second route. A free hand-over without a document — given away, swapped — is not provided for in the 2021 sources; it can be reproduced as an order with the customer "for myself" and a price of zero.

In practice: When hens start to lay. Japanese laying quail usually begin at an age of about six to nine weeks; individual early starters are quicker, whole groups often need longer than the optimistic figure from the internet. Two factors shift the start the most. First, the light: quail react to day length, and below about fourteen hours of light a group gets going only with difficulty. More does not help indefinitely — well over sixteen hours brings mainly restlessness. Above all keep the lighting times constant; a rhythm that is different every day is worse than a shorter but consistent one. Second, the feed: the start of laying needs a layer feed with sufficient protein and calcium. If hens get fattening feed for too long, they lay later and produce thinner shells. If a group falls well short of the range, check the light and the feed first — and only after that the genetics.

7.Feed, feed conversion and the search for the success factors

QuailBreeder sums up the purpose of all this record-keeping in a single sentence: isolate the success factors. Assess feed conversion, housing conditions and stocking density in order to recognise superior performance. The word that matters is "isolate". The aim is not more numbers, but numbers that can be compared — and that can therefore answer a question.

At the end of a cycle, once all the data has been entered, exactly these three quantities are open to your judgment: the quality of the feed, the housing and the stocking density in the cages. From them you can see where the results were below average and where the performance was superior. The application promises no more than that, and no more should be expected of a key figure: it tells you where you have to look, not what you will earn.

Comparable means: same period, same group

A single figure means nothing. Meaning comes only from comparison, and a comparison holds only if the conditions have been recorded. Three rules are enough for that:

Equal periods. A group over three weeks and a group over five are not comparable, because young birds convert feed better than older ones.
Comparable groups. Similar age, similar origin, similar starting weights. Otherwise you are measuring genetics and calling it feed.
One change at a time. If you switch the feed and stock the cages more loosely at the same time, the better cycle that follows has not been explained, only made nicer.

So record what you have changed, and record it on the day of the change. For rearing this is expressly provided for: daily recording of mortality, together with notes on changes to feeding, climate and the like, makes it easier to establish causes. That note is the part that later makes the difference between an observation and an explanation.

What to record	Why
Start and end of the period	without equal length there is no comparison
Number of birds at the start and at the end	losses change the denominator
Type of feed and date of any change	the most common unnoticed change
Location and stock per cage	stocking density is one of the three quantities
Anything unusual in the climate	explains outliers that otherwise stay puzzling

What ruins the figure

That is exactly what the loss records are for: every loss can be logged and evaluated by date, time and the specific cage or location, so that health risks are recognised sooner. Keep these entries properly and you can at least read a bad period correctly afterwards.

The one key figure that is already there

On hatch day your first performance indicator appears without any calculation on your part: the viability rate, the ratio of chicks hatched to the number of eggs set for incubation. In rearing, the main task is then to hold this figure and to raise it. Take it as the yardstick for what a usable key figure looks like: two numbers, both recorded where they arise, and a clearly bounded stretch between them.

Completed batches are archived automatically, so that the active dashboard stays clear and older data remains findable. The archive is your material for comparison — provided you have noted, for every cycle, the conditions under which it ran.

On feed the answer is short, and it should save you a search: the application does not record feed quantities. Neither feed put in nor feed left over, neither per batch nor per location. If you want to know the feed cost per kilo of meat you keep that outside — and the application supplies the figure such a calculation is otherwise missing: how many birds stood in which cages over which period. It follows that the application does not calculate feed conversion either. What it does show as a percentage is embryonic mortality — losses during incubation, against the eggs set — and the occupancy of the machines. All other losses appear as counts, separated by stage: Embryonics, Nestlings, Nestlings (finish), Fledglings, Fledglings (finish), Adults. Viability you work out from two figures that both sit on the batch: chicks hatched divided by eggs set. As for comparison: there is no export for the figures — no spreadsheet, no file — and no view that puts two batches side by side either. You compare by opening both batches and noting the figures next to each other. For the three key figures that matter that is enough; anyone wanting to analyse more should copy them into a spreadsheet of their own when a batch is closed.

8.Dates, reminders and your own calendar

A quail operation has few fixed dates, but the few it has cannot be moved. That is why QuailBreeder offers to synchronise important dates and deadlines with the calendar you use anyway — iCloud or Google Calendar — and, in addition or instead, to send personalised notifications to your device. The purpose is plain: hatch day should reach you even on a day when your mind is elsewhere.

Where the fixed dates lie

The process sets the dates, not the other way round. It begins when the eggs go into the incubator. From then on, incubation runs with its own requirements for temperature, humidity and turning — a period in which you have nothing to decide, only something to check.

The first real date is the transfer. If you work with a separate setter, you state as early as when you create the batch which trays in the hatcher are intended for it. That fixes the transfer day before it is needed, and the application can remind you of it instead of leaving you to count back.

Then comes the hatch window. A hatch is not a moment but something that draws out: the first chicks are there while others have not yet pipped. You choose the incubator and tray number, enter how many chicks have actually hatched, and state which brooder they are placed in. This is precisely the day the application does not want you to miss — and the day that produces a number you cannot reconstruct after the fact.

The third date is the move out of the brooder. When the birds go for fattening, you choose fattening from the list of tasks, state the location and fill the cages that are free on that day. This date is the only one of the three that can be shifted by a day or two — provided the brooder can still carry the birds. If you plan it, you have the cage space ready before you need it.

At the end stands the slaughter date. What matters is that the flock is ready for slaughter within 50 to 60 days; anyone who feeds beyond that period is paying feed for weight gain that is barely coming any more. This too is a date that can be written into the calendar well in advance.

Date	Fixed as soon as
Transfer to the hatcher	the batch has been created and started
Hatch window	the batch has been created and started
Move out of the brooder	the chicks are in the brooder
Slaughter	the hatch day has been recorded

Calendar or notification

Both routes are available, and they do not exclude one another. A notification on the device reaches you at once and is then gone. A calendar entry sits on a date and stays there — even if you overlook it twice on the day.

Set up the connection before the first batch is running, not afterwards. A calendar connected two days before the hatch no longer has the dates for that batch, which arose earlier.

What gets created is not two dates but every signal a batch produces on its way. The application knows eight occasions, and in the calendar they appear with the same wording as in the task list:

Occasion	Wording in the application
Eggs set	Quantity of eggs
Prepare the hatcher	Set up Hatcher on 1 day before finish setter
Transfer day	Transfer to hatcher
Switch off the turner	Turn off auto-turner
Hatch day	Hatching & Growing up
Move into the cages	Feeding
Ready for slaughter	Ready for slaughter
Taken over into the breeding stock	Breeding flock

The transfer day therefore has a day's warning as an entry of its own — the hatcher has to be warm before the eggs go in. And "Turn off auto-turner" is the date most easily forgotten and most expensively paid for. The application remembers the calendar identifier of every entry it creates and therefore does not add the same date twice.

Both are switched centrally rather than per batch: the settings hold one switch for calendar access together with the choice of calendar, and one for notifications. There is no separate switch for running a single batch without reminders — the reminders belong to the batch just as the day count does.

9.Sales and invoicing

QuailBreeder records every step of the operation — from the egg to the invoice. The last part of that sentence is meant literally: the document for the customer is not a separate procedure in another program, but the end of the same chain that began with the eggs you set.

From bird to document

The route runs through a single document. The precondition for the slaughter process is that you create a slaughter sheet — a processing order. This order serves a double purpose: it doubles as the sales order, and it forms the basis for the invoice that is generated from the template and sent to the customer.

In practical terms this means that what you have to write down on slaughter day anyway — which birds, how many, from which stock — is already half the invoice. You enter the details once, on the day they arise, and not in the evening from memory.

The invoice itself comes from a template. You create branded invoices with fully customizable templates, and the template can be edited; clickable links are supported. What the template says — your name, your address, your details, your appearance — is your decision, and you make it once for all the invoices that follow.

Once a batch is empty, that is, once there is no bird left in it, it is transferred to the archive automatically. Completed production batches are archived so that the active view stays clear and older data remains findable. For invoicing that has a pleasant side effect: a sale stays connected to the batch it came from.

What this application does not do

Here clarity matters more than convenience. QuailBreeder produces a document from the figures you enter. It provides no tax advice and does not check whether your invoice meets the requirements that apply to you.

Which mandatory details an invoice has to carry differs from country to country, and depends besides on how your operation is classified for tax, whom you sell to and on what scale. The same goes for the question of how long records must be kept and whether selling meat or eggs triggers additional requirements where you are. These questions are answered by your tax adviser or the responsible authority — not by a handbook and not by an app. Settle it once before you write the first invoice, and then enter the result into your template. After that the template works for you.

In the order in which it happens

Create the slaughter sheet, that is, the processing order — without it the slaughter process does not begin.
Use the same order as the sales order, with buyer, quantity and price.
Generate the invoice from the template and send it to the customer.
The emptied batch moves into the archive by itself.

Four steps, three of which are part of slaughter day anyway. The only extra work comes once, when you set up the template.

The document always comes out of an order, and the order always comes out of birds in cages: you choose the location and the cages, give the number of birds and price it either by weight or per bird. Whether the birds are slaughtered or handed over alive makes no difference to the document — it is the same procedure. There is no document for selling eggs; the application does not treat eggs as goods. There is customer management: per customer a name, address, telephone number and a discount in per cent that applies to the order by itself. The details are therefore entered once and picked from then on. If you sell to yourself — your own table, home slaughter — the application puts in "for myself" without a customer being chosen; the batch is then fully accounted for without you having to invent a buyer.

The arithmetic is plain: the subtotal is price times quantity (per kilo or per bird), the customer discount comes off it, and that gives the total. Fields for tax rates or VAT are not documented: the document knows price, quantity, weight, discount and total. If you are registered for VAT you will therefore need an invoice from another program for your books — the application's document is a statement for the customer, not a tax document.

10.Keeping your data clean: archive instead of deleting

After the third or fourth cycle a question comes up that nobody asks on the first day: what to do with everything that is over? Batches that were sold long ago, brooders that have stood empty for months, loss reports from a summer you can barely remember. The obvious reaction is to tidy up. The right one is to archive.

What the application does by itself

QuailBreeder archives completed production batches automatically. This keeps the active dashboard clear, and the data remains retrievable in the long term. You already know the trigger from the workflow: as soon as there are no birds left in a batch, it moves into the archive. You do not have to press anything or decide anything — the last sale takes care of it.

In practical terms this means that what you see on the dashboard is your work of today. What you no longer see is your work from back then, and it is preserved in full.

The batch list in the Records tab is headed "Current batches" and shows the batches under way. A completed batch carries an internal "no longer active" mark and drops out of that list — which is the point of archiving: the list stays short enough to take in at a glance in the shed of a morning.

"Out of sight" and "gone" are two different things

The difference sounds academic until you have confused the two once.

An archived batch has disappeared from view, not from the records. Its egg count, its hatch, its losses, its location and its invoice lie there unchanged. Deleted data, by contrast, is gone — and with it the only yardstick a breeding operation possesses at all: itself at an earlier point in time.

An example everybody knows. Your hatch rate is worse this spring than usual. Why? The parent birds, the machine, the season, a new source of eggs? That question can only be answered if there is a "usual". The batch from two years ago, in the same month, from the same incubator, is not ballast — it is the yardstick. Delete it and you are back to guessing.

Wrong figures are corrected, not removed

Do not confuse data care with data cosmetics. A typing error noticed right after entry is a case for the "Undo" button, which deletes the last action — that is what it is there for, and you should use it without hesitation.

A batch that went badly is another matter. The bad run is the most valuable record you have; it is the only one you can learn something from. Removing it to make the statistics look friendlier cheats the only person who reads the figures.

Two tools, and they reach different distances. Undo takes back the last action while you are still in the procedure — the remedy for a mis-tap. Once a record has been saved, deleting is what helps: individual loss and occupancy records can be removed ("Delete record", with the explicit note "This operation cannot be undone"), after which you enter the correct figure afresh. A whole batch can be deleted too.

Changing a saved record in place — overwriting the figure — is not provided for. That is not an obstacle but a decision in favour of traceability: a loss that can quietly be rewritten later is worthless as a record. To correct, you delete and enter again, and that stays visible.

What turns out to be valuable later

The following comes from practice, not from a regulation. What you are required to record depends on the law of your country and district — that is the subject of the last chapter.

In practice: The valuable details are the ones you cannot reconstruct later: the lay date and the origin of the hatching eggs, the approximate age of the parent birds, which machine and which tray a batch occupied, the date of every change of feed, and every disturbance with its date — power cut, door left open, heatwave, relocation. Equally valuable: losses recorded where they occurred, that is, by date and cage or location, because a cluster in one place is information, whereas a total at the end of the month is not. You can save yourself almost everything the machine regulates anyway: temperature and humidity readings copied out hourly from a working incubator fill pages and are never read again. Note the deviation instead — the day on which things were not normal is the day you will be looking for in two years.

The habit that matters

Record events where they happen, and when they happen. A figure written down two days later from memory is an estimate, and estimates ruin precisely the key figures you are using the application for in the first place. The viability rate of a batch is only as sound as the worst number that goes into it.

When you close a cycle, briefly go through the four points:

Are all losses recorded, including the individual chicks of the first days?
Does every loss state the cage or location, not just the date?
Is the quantity sold complete, so that the batch goes cleanly into the archive?
Is there a note on what was different in this run from usual?

After that you may safely lose sight of the batch. It is not gone — it is waiting for the day you need it.

11.Common questions and what to check first

Most queries about the application are not faults in the application but gaps in the records. This chapter collects the cases that actually occur in day-to-day work and names, for each of them, what you should check first.

Numbers and reality

The app shows more birds than are in the shed

Almost always a record is missing, not the software. Work backwards through the losses of the last few days: individual chicks in the first weeks are noticed in the morning, cleared away and forgotten by the evening. That is exactly what the daily recording is for — and exactly why it should happen at the cage, not at the kitchen table. Check as well whether a move from the brooder to a location was entered in full, and whether a partial handover to a customer has been recorded.

The app shows fewer birds than are in the shed

Usually a hatch figure has been entered too low, or chicks from two trays were placed in one brooder and only one of them noted. Compare the hatch figure you entered with what you actually had in your hands on hatch day.

A batch has disappeared from the dashboard

That is the normal case, not a loss. If there are no birds left in a batch, it is transferred to the archive automatically; the data is preserved and remains retrievable. If a batch disappears earlier than expected, the last handover was probably recorded as complete although there are still birds there.

Something has ended up in the wrong place

The batch is running in the wrong incubator

First check whether the batch has already been started. As long as the eggs have not yet been set, a batch can also be created retrospectively; after that this option no longer applies. If incubation has already started, this is a correction to a process that is under way.

What is documented: a running batch can be edited — you open it in the batch list, and there you find the distribution of the eggs across the trays, the hatcher trays and the notes. Individual records can be deleted and entered anew.

More important in practice than the entry is the consequence: if the machine is a setter without a hatching function, you need hatching trays for the last few days. Settle first where the eggs are physically to hatch, and put the entry in order afterwards.

The chicks are in the wrong brooder

Decide first whether you want to move the birds or change the entry. Moving them is uncritical in the first few days, as long as the warmth at the destination is already there; what matters more is that the capacity of the target brooder is not exceeded, because overcrowding in the first two weeks is one of the most common avoidable causes of loss.

In practice the same route applies as for all saved records: delete the wrong occupancy record and assign the group again. Moving birds between two brooders as a procedure of its own is not documented.

The app warns of overcrowding although there is still room

Then the catalogue holds a different figure from the one you have in your head. The warnings are only as good as the capacities you entered once. Measure the brooder again and correct the catalogue value — and enter the figure that is sustainable in the long run, not the one that just about works on a cool evening.

A key figure looks impossible

The viability rate is strikingly high

The value is the ratio of chicks hatched to the number of eggs set for incubation. A value that is too good therefore almost always comes from the denominator: eggs were added without increasing the batch quantity, or unfertilised eggs were removed before the hatch and taken out of the batch count. Check the number of eggs set before you enjoy the result.

The viability rate is strikingly low

Here the numerator is the suspect: chicks that arrived on day two of the hatch and were never added afterwards are permanently missing. Check as well whether hatching losses have been counted twice by accident — once as not hatched, once as a loss in the brooder.

The fattening period does not match the numbers

Count from the hatch date of the batch, not from the date the birds went into the cage. As a rule of thumb, practice reckons with slaughter maturity at about 50 to 60 days; if your batch is well above that, feed, stocking density and housing are the points that the completed cycle makes comparable.

Reminders and dates

The reminder for transfer day did not arrive

Check in this order: are notifications enabled at all in the settings on the "Home" tab? Have you chosen push notifications, the calendar connection or both? And does your device allow the app to send notifications? Where an operation is shared, the calendar connection is usually the more reliable option, because everyone involved sees the same appointment.

If none of this fits

Describe the case in the support centre: you create a ticket with a subject, category and priority, state what you expected and what happened, and receive a first reply within 24 hours.

12.What you have to settle outside the application

This chapter answers not a single legal question, and that is deliberate. Notification and registration duties for keeping poultry, the conditions for selling eggs and live birds, labeling, slaughter and hygiene requirements are regulated differently by country, federal state and district. What applies to a keeper two villages away need not apply to you — and a piece of advice from a forum is, in case of doubt, the most expensive part of your operation.

What this chapter can do is show you which questions you have to ask, whom to ask and when. That leaves you able to act, without anyone here giving you a ruling they are not allowed to give.

What QuailBreeder is in this matter

The application keeps records: batches, stocks, locations, losses by date and place, slaughter sheets and invoices. That is an operational log, not proof of lawfulness. Whether your records have the form and the scope that an authority expects of you is for the authority to decide — not the software and not this handbook. The practical benefit is considerable nonetheless: anyone who can document stock, period and origin within minutes when asked is having a different conversation from someone with a box of scraps of paper.

The questions and who to put them to

The bodies below are the usual points of contact in German-speaking countries; in Austria and Switzerland they have different names and are in part cut differently. When in doubt, find the body responsible for where you live and put the same questions to it.

Whom you ask	What you ask
The veterinary office of your district or city	Do I have to notify or register my quail keeping, from what number of birds onwards, and in which register? Which records on stock, purchases, disposals and losses do you expect from me? What applies to my stock in the event of animal disease outbreaks and orders to keep birds indoors? Do I have to provide any proof when buying in birds or hatching eggs?
Official food safety inspection, usually in the same office	Under what conditions may I supply eggs — from the farm, at a market, to shops or catering? What applies to meat from my own slaughtering, and where does small-scale supply end? What requirements apply to rooms, refrigeration and cleaning?
The local regulatory office or the municipality, and the building authority where relevant	Is keeping birds permitted at my location, at what size, and are there requirements on distances, noise, odor or structures? Do I need a permit for a shed or aviaries?
The chamber of agriculture or a comparable advisory body	At this scale do I count as a farmer or as a hobby keeper, and what does that change? Which questions of notification, insurance and contributions follow from it? Are there advisory services or compulsory qualifications for keeping birds?
Tax adviser	From what point are my sales relevant for tax, and under which type of income? Do I have to register a business, and how is that delimited from agriculture? What has to appear on my invoices?
Your vet	Which preventive measures, examinations and certificates are sensible or required for my stock? Whom do I inform in the event of unusual losses?

Put the questions concretely, not in general terms. "May I keep quail" yields a useless answer; "I keep around 200 quail in a backyard in this municipality and want to supply eggs from the farm — what do I need for that" yields one you can work with.

The timing

Settle this before the first sale, not afterwards. It is the only piece of advice in this chapter that applies everywhere: as long as you are breeding for your own table, your situation is straightforward; the moment the first egg or the first bird leaves the yard for money, the classification changes — and that is hard to repair retrospectively. You should repeat the same exercise when you scale up substantially, open a second location, buy in birds for the first time or switch from direct supply to markets and retail.

Take figures to the conversation, not intentions: current and planned stock, the number and type of locations, whether eggs or meat, to whom and in what quantities. Those are precisely the details you have in the application. Afterwards, put in writing whom you spoke to, when, and what you were told; with rules that change, that is your only anchor.

And for the sake of completeness: with sick birds, or birds dying in conspicuous numbers, the vet is the responsible party, not the handbook and not the application. The application helps you to give the vet the facts — when, where and how many losses occurred. The rest is their profession.