Before the Laying and Breeding Season
The biggest poultry admin job of the year lands in late winter: strip every coop back to bare wood, scrub and disinfect perches, nest boxes and feeders, and treat the housing for red mite before the birds come into lay and the mite population wakes up with them. Repair perches, replace rotten nest-box liners and check that ventilation works without a draught at roost height. Open the year's egg log and hatch record at the same sitting, because a log started after the first setting of eggs is a log with the interesting part missing. If you breed, this is also the moment to review last season's hatch results and decide which pens actually earned their place.
Flock Health Dates Through the Year
Put an annual flock health review in the diary — a conversation with a poultry-savvy vet or an experienced mentor about the parasite control plan, the state of the flock's feet and legs, and any birds whose condition slipped over winter. Leg bands and wing bands on breeding birds need checking as legs grow and bands age; a band checked yearly is a record kept, and a band ignored becomes an injury. Where the flock is enrolled in a testing programme for showing or selling hatching eggs, the blood-testing appointment is an annual diary fixture with paperwork that must be current before birds move. Note worming dates where your vet advises them, and record what was used beside the date.
Housing, Security and Ground
Walk the perimeter of every run once a year with a predator's eye: foxes test fences in the hungry months, and a yearly audit finds the dug-under corner, the sagging wire and the pop-hole latch that no longer drops properly. Rotate or rest the ground on a planned cycle — poultry ground sours under continuous use, building up parasite eggs and bare mud — and note which pens rest this year so next year's plan is written rather than remembered. Drainage deserves its own diary line before the wet season: a flooded run is a coccidiosis invitation, and gravel, slabs or a moved shelter are far easier to arrange in a dry month.
Rules, Records and Supplies
Check once a year whether your local rules have changed: some areas ask poultry keepers to register their flock, shows set entry deadlines with health paperwork attached, and selling eggs or birds can carry its own record expectations. Review the egg log at the season's end and write down what it tells you — which pen laid best, when the moult stopped lay, where feed money went — because those notes set next year's breeding and buying decisions. Finish with a feed-store audit: rotate stored feed so nothing ages at the back of the bin, check rodent control, and list what runs out before the winter order.
Scattered notes in the feed shed help nobody at inspection or sale time, so KinsLe's Pet Passport gathers a flock's health dates, egg records and registration papers into one portable packet that is ready whenever they are needed.