Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter
Monday 17th April March 2017
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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PII 062: Anatomy of Farm Operation Record Form Used to Collect data for Tayo Solagbade’s Excel-VB Poultry Farm Manager
This issue of my Performance Improvement Ideas newsletter features a dissection of the sections in Farm Operations Record Keeping Form that comes ready-to-print in my popular Excel-VB Poultry Farm Manager software.
To use it, the client simply prints out a copy using the command button provided in the app’s Menu (see top left of Form Section No. 1 below).
Then photocopies of the printed blank form are produced, with a copy being filled in daily, by the farm hands or other assigned personnel, using records from the shop floor or as the activities to be documented happen.
Ideally, what should happen next is that at the end of each day’s work, the farm hand that filled in the form would sign in the space provided, and hand it over to the supervisor/manager or owner – depending on the management structure in place.
The latter would then retire to a preferably quiet location, free from distractions, to review each completed form, and once certain that the filled details are valid, s/he would proceed to post them into the relevant interfaces in the software.
Form Section No. 1: Laying Pens
The operative will start by filling in the name of the farm in front of “Farm:” and s/he will also fill in the date in front of “Date:”
Note that the app automatically applies the name of the farm at the very top of the page, just immediately above “Production Record Chart”
This section caters for the flock of laying birds on the farm. Data entered here gets posted into the Layers table in the app. Note the different table fields, which identify layers in different states or conditions, for the purpose of reconciling opening and closing flock sizes.
The form provides for entry of data for up to 3 pens, with each pen having 3 cage lines. In the original version of the app, it has 6 cage lines per pen.
If diligently used, this form section forces the operative to physically check the number of birds and also account for dead, missing, culled, or tranferred ones.
S/he would be kept on his/her toes knowing that when his/her form in filed in the records folder, it could be referred to at a later date for use in tracing any inconsistencies that could arise in the future.
To the right, after the flock record, comes the Feeding Record column. The user posts the total amount (kg) of feed fed to the birds in each cage line. The app instantly generates the grammes consumed by each bird in that cage line. Best practice range is 100 to 110 grammes per bird.
Next comes the egg laying record, The user has to post relevant numbers of eggs collected from each cage line, per pen.
And this has to be done according to the number of times collection is done. From working with multiple farms to customize this software, I found it was safe to settle for collections done twice daily. The specific times the collections are done vary from farm to farm – the software allows the users post as/when the data becomes available.
Another KPI computed by the app is the Hen Day Percentage (HDP).
It uses the egg laying data posted to generate the corresponding HDP. Best practice range for the HDP is from 65% up to about 85%. It is unlikely that most small to medium sized farms can record anything higher with any degree of consistency in terms of farm overall average HDP.
NB: Anything outside best practice range, for any of the measured parameters, should raise some cause for concern, and action should be taken to find out why it is so. The app’s charted display of the KPIs offers good opportunity to better determine if any unhealthy trend is occurring.
Form Section No. 2: Rearing Pens
The younger birds – pullets to be specific – will come from rearing pens into the cages. So this section naturally does NOT have provision for eggs collection, since this group of birds will not yet have reach Point Of Lay (POL)
As a result, the record required to be kept for them only has to do with flock size and names of farm personnel who handled each Pen.
Below is a preview of an article I wrote about 10 years ago, in which I explain the different Key Performance Indicators in terms of what they measure, why they are useful for farm management decision making, and how to calculate them (which is also how my Excel-VB Poultry Farm Manager does it!)
Practical Poultry Farm Business Performance Calculations
Introduction
In this article, I share VERY practical, real world relevant tips about performance measures you can compute daily, weekly, monthly and at the end of year to accurately determine at every stage whether your poultry farm business is operating optimally.
These performance indices are NOT aggregate measures. In other words, they are NOT measured in monetary terms. Instead they have NO units, being ratios, usage rates and percentages that help to (a) establish a normal trend of your farms’ behaviour (b) quickly identify/detect departures from that trend, so that you can take timely/corrective action.
Note that these measures are tried and tested, and are actually built into a custom spreadsheet software application I built for a client who runs a Twelve thousand (12,000) layer poultry farm business.
Click here to read the full article which provides detailed explanation of the KPIs and how to calculate them
Form Section No. 3: Eggs Transportation & Operators Checklist
Most of the farms I’ve sold this app to, do not have elaborate egg sizing classes. In many cases small and big were the 2 classes used, for sale. Cracked eggs featured on all farms.
Now, the table below the eggs transportation records table contains a Daily Operator Checklist designed to force each operative assigned to fill this farm record form, to stay alert to his/her duties in a way that would ensure best practice conformity at the end of the day.
So, on the form you see tasks specifications for each pen e.g remove litter daily into pit, and so on.
Notice that at the bottom of the form, provision is made for the supervisor or any responsible staff, to sign that s/he has seen the completed form, and that s/he has checked/confirmed that what she filled in was accurate and true representation of the situation on the farm.
It goes without saying that no serious minded supervisor or manager wants to be found wanting when checks are carried out on the signed forms against the reality on the farm grounds.
So, quite often this document section forces the staff or manager in charge to go out of his/her way to check and ascertain/ensure that all is done right.
In the process, best practice conformity is achieved!
Proper use of this farm record form, or an adapted version of it, can dramatically boost the accuracy and reliability of record keeping on any farm. It only requires diligent enforcement by the farm management.
Excel-VB Driven Ration Formulator
1. Click here to learn more about this app – watch demo videos etc
2. Click here to watch a 4 part video in which I demonstrate how to use this app to formulate rations using real life data sent to me by an Algerian PhD student.
Click here to contact me about purchasing this product.
EXCEL-VB DRIVEN POULTRY LAYER FARM MANAGER SOFTWARE
Click here to download a detailed PDF user guide and watch 15 screen shot user guide tutorials of the Monthly Poultry Farm Manager that I now offer Farm CEOs.
Click here to contact me about purchasing this product.
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