Record your first birds

Filling in the form, field by field

From the Birds page, the add button opens the form. Species, breed, sex, ring number, status and date of birth make up the required base. If you only know the year, switch the date field to year-only entry rather than inventing a day.

Sex can stay unknown. That is the normal case after a hatch, and the record will later offer “Male” and “Female” as quick actions, in a single click, without reopening the form.

The ring number is the main identifier

The field is entirely free, and that is deliberate: every federation has its own format. Type the number exactly as engraved, whether it looks like “2345/26”, “BPC PR 503 105” or “ABS-KJ-24-042”.

The only rule is uniqueness per species within your aviary. Get into the habit of a consistent format from your first entries: it is what will later make your searches and sorting reliable.

Where the bird comes from

The source is chosen on the record: born in the aviary, purchase, gift, loan or exchange. Depending on that choice, fields appear for the price, the seller, the address or the description of the exchange.

This is not paperwork. The purchase price feeds the acquisition cost that will appear in your financial analysis, with nothing to re-enter anywhere else.

Declaring its parents without leaving the record

Further down the form, the pedigree section asks where the bird comes from: unknown parents, classic pair, polygamous group or complex group. The choice is not trivial, it decides how certain the parentage is, and the “Pair your birds” step returns to it in detail.

As soon as one of the three modes is chosen, a switch offers to create the parent pair right here. The sub-form carries the essentials of the pair form: breeding birds, name, formation date, status, aviary and breeding pen. And as in the pair form, a breeding bird not yet in the aviary is created from the search field, without losing what you have typed.

This is the natural path when you record a young bird hatched at home while its parents are not yet paired on screen. You do not have to leave the form, nor come back later to attach the bird to its pair.

You are taking over an existing flock

Entering sixty birds one by one is not compulsory. The bulk entry form first sets the shared values, species, breed, sex, then lets you personalise each line, typically the ring and the name. Each line duplicates at the press of a button, which saves retyping a whole brood.

Start with the breeding birds. They are the ones you will need at the pairing step, and the rest of the flock can be entered over the following days.

Status matters more than it looks

Six statuses are provided, and each has a precise effect.

Status	What it means
Active	The bird is alive and present. It counts in the flock and the statistics
Sold	Brings up the sale price, the date and the buyer’s details
Loaned	Adds the expected return date and the recipient
Given	Records the date and the recipient’s details
Deceased	Removes the bird from the active flock, without erasing its record or its offspring
Inactive	The bird has left the aviary without being dead, for instance returned after a loan

The last four share one thing: they remove the bird from the count of birds present. It stays in the database, in the history and in the pedigree, where its offspring goes on existing. That is why changing a status is almost always better than deleting a record.

The revenue from a sale flows into your finances on its own: there is nothing to re-enter anywhere else.

Your own statuses are read as “active”

You can create as many statuses as you like, with their colour and their icon: in quarantine, reserved, recovering, for sale, whatever your aviary calls for.

One rule is worth knowing before you create them. The app only recognises four statuses as absent: sold, loaned, given and deceased. Any other status, including the ones you invent, is treated as a bird present in the aviary. A bird moved to “in quarantine” or “reserved” therefore keeps counting in your flock, keeps appearing in pick lists and keeps entering your statistics.

This is neither a flaw nor a limit, as long as you know it: a custom status qualifies a bird you still have, it does not take one out of the aviary.