Follow a clutch through to hatching

Recording the clutch

A clutch is entered from the Laying page: laying date, number of eggs, and the pair concerned, to be picked from the list.

The link with a pair is optional, but it is what unlocks everything else: the species is detected, hence the incubation time, sequential laying where the species practises it, and the pedigree of the young that will hatch. A clutch without a pair stays a simple egg count.

So you may as well start from the pair. Three paths lead there, and all three open the form with the pair already selected: the add button in the clutch section of its record, the “Add a laying” entry in the menu at the top of that same record, and a right click on the pair in the list, which avoids opening anything at all. In the thick of the season the last one wins: you note the clutch where you were looking at the pair.

Two ways to record, depending on what you know

It all hangs on one question: do you already know how many eggs the clutch will hold?

You do. That is the case for species whose laying is regular and whose clutch size you have set, two eggs for pigeons for instance. Record the clutch as it is: the quantity arrives pre-filled, the start of brooding works itself out from the laying rhythm, and you can save it straight into brooding. The rest unfolds without you.

You do not. That is the common case for chickens and every species whose clutch builds up over days: on the first morning you have no idea whether it will be eight eggs or twelve, and above all which day the female will settle. Do not guess.

Create the clutch with the Available status, holding the eggs collected so far. Its record then offers four quick actions: one more egg and one less egg, to follow the count day after day, then natural incubation and artificial incubation.

The day the female settles, or the day you put the eggs in the machine, you click the mode that applies. Brooding starts on that date, the one you observed, and the hatch is worked out from there. The count stays available afterwards, by the way: a clutch can still change by an egg after brooding has begun.

This second way of working is not a workaround, it is the right move when the brooding date is observed rather than calculated.

The date that counts is not the laying date

This is what surprises people most, and it is also what makes the dates right. A female does not necessarily brood the day she lays, and incubation only starts when she settles.

If the species declares a laying rhythm, the record adapts: the date field reads 1st egg date, the quantity arrives pre-filled with the declared clutch size, and a Start of brooding field appears, worked out as follows:

Start of brooding = date of the 1^st egg + (trigger rank − 1) × days between eggs

The trigger rank comes from the species’ “Start of brooding” setting, the one you put in place at the first step. Set to complete clutch, it equals the actual size of the clutch: twelve eggs one day apart push brooding back by eleven days. Set to the second egg, with two days between eggs, it pushes it back by only two.

A rank higher than the actual clutch falls back on the last egg laid: a species that broods from the third egg but lays only two starts on the second.

Correct the date when your practice differs

The Start of brooding field is editable, and that is not a token precaution. Two common practices escape any per-species calculation.

Removing eggs: each egg is replaced by a dummy as it is laid, then the whole clutch is given back on the day of the last one. The hatches are then deliberately synchronised, and the brooding date is the day they were returned.

The incubator: every egg starts there on the day it goes into the machine, whatever the species’ natural pattern.

In both cases, correct the date and the calculation steps aside.

Moving into brooding

A clutch’s status follows its journey: available in stock, sold, in an incubator, naturally brooded, hatched, failed or eaten. From the record, moving into natural or artificial brooding takes one action, dates included.

This is where the species configuration, done at the first step, pays off. The incubation time used is the species’, with a fallback of twenty-one days if you never set it: that fallback suits chickens and nobody else, eighteen days for a pigeon and thirty for a goose.

Selling eggs follows the same path: the “Sold” status brings up the unit price, and both the total and the revenue flow into your statistics on their own.

Recording the hatch

On the day, the clutch record asks for three things: the hatch date, the number of successful hatches and the number of failures. The success rate works itself out.

AviarySoft then offers to create the records of the young. Each arrives pre-filled with the species, the breed, the date of birth and the link to the parent pair. Ring and sex remain, to be completed when you know them, which is exactly what the quick actions on the bird’s record are for.

Until then, these young birds show N/A in place of the ring number, in the list as well as in the selection menus. It is not a data-entry mistake, it is the mark of birds still waiting for their ring: on banding day, that marker is all you need to spot everyone left to identify.

The shape of the number itself is set species by species: two boxes with the year pre-filled, or a free field where you copy the engraving exactly as it reads. The setting lives in the species record, under configuration, and the step “Create your account and set up your aviary” goes into it.

Banding

The banding age is set per species, in days after hatching. The reminder comes due on the dashboard and as a notification.

It is the most concrete piece of automation in the whole journey: between the clutch recorded at the previous step and the banding alert, you had nothing to schedule yourself.