📖 Complete User Guide

How to use Quail Keeper Max

A step-by-step manual for every tool in the app — from logging your first egg to printing a pedigree certificate. Jump to any section below, or read it start to finish.

Last updated August 1, 2026

Jump to a section

🧭How Quail Keeper Max Is Organized🚀Getting Started✨Your First 60 Seconds — the Setup Wizard🏠Your Dashboard🐣My Coveys📍Cages & Locations🥚Egg Collection🐦My Birds💵Selling Birds🩺Health Tracker🛡️Vaccines & Compliance🧬Breeding🌳Pedigree, Certificates & Cage Cards🧪Color Genetics Calculator🌡️Hatch Tracker & Incubation🌾Feed & Cost Per Egg🧰Equipment Inventory💊Medicine Cabinet🍗Meat Bird Tracking💰Financials🧾Sales, Customers & Receipts⚓Captain Coturnix — Your Personal Advisor📖Farm Journal🏅Achievements & Milestone Cards⏰Reminders & Notifications💬The Quail Keeper Community🧮Free Tools & Guides📥Importing & Exporting Your Data📲Install It as an App⚙️Account & Settings🆘Getting Help
🧭

How Quail Keeper Max Is Organized

Almost everything in QKM hangs off three containers. Get these straight and the rest of the app makes sense immediately — mix them up and your records will fight you later.

  1. 1COVEY = a group of birds you track together. Egg counts, health records and costs all roll up to a covey. Name it for the birds, not the furniture: "Blue Celadon Layers", "Jumbo Grow-outs", "2026 Breeders".
  2. 2LOCATION = the physical housing — a cage, rack, pen, coop or brooder. Locations have a capacity and you assign coveys to them. So "Rack A cage 1" is a location, never a covey.
  3. 3BIRD = one individual you care about by name or band: a breeder, a keeper, a show bird. You do NOT need a bird record for every quail you own — headcounts live on the covey. Individual records are what make weights, pedigrees, family trees and shareable pedigree cards possible.
  4. 4A quick test: if you could pick it up and hose it out, it is a location. If it eats, it is a bird — and a group of them is a covey.
  5. 5Two more homes worth knowing: equipment (feeders, waterers, incubators) has its own list, and buyers belong in Sales → Customers rather than in a bird’s notes.
Tip: Most keepers need a handful of coveys, one location per cage, and bird records only for their breeders. If you find yourself creating one covey per cage, you almost certainly want locations instead.
🚀

Getting Started

Create your account and you are ready to track in minutes. Every new signup gets 14 days of full access to every feature — no credit card required. When the trial ends you can pick a paid plan or keep tracking one covey for free, forever.

  1. 1Click "Start Free Trial" on the home page and enter your email and a password.
  2. 2Confirm your email from the message we send. If it has not arrived in a few minutes, check your spam or promotions folder.
  3. 3Add your name and (optionally) your farm name — these show up on your dashboard, on printed pedigree cards, and on sale receipts.
  4. 4You start on a 14-day full-access trial automatically. A banner at the top of the dashboard shows how many days are left.
  5. 5When you are ready, open Pricing to choose Free ($0 — one covey of up to 15 birds, daily egg logging, basic health records, the color-genetics calculator, and 90 days of history), Pro ($39/yr or $5/mo — unlimited coveys and birds plus breeding, pedigree, hatch, feed, equipment and sales tools, full history, CSV export, and the Captain Coturnix advisor), or Max ($89/yr or $9/mo — everything in Pro plus Captain’s proactive Daily Briefing and priority support).
Tip: Free Mode is great for 4-H and FFA projects — egg logging, basic health records, and the color-genetics calculator for one covey, free for life.
✨

Your First 60 Seconds — the Setup Wizard

New accounts land on a short three-step wizard that creates your first covey and hands you a read on where your birds stand. You can leave it at any time — anything you have already entered is kept.

  1. 1Step 1 — name your first covey, and if you like, say which cage or pen it lives in. QKM creates that location for you and files the covey into it, so the covey-versus-location split is set up correctly from day one.
  2. 2If the name you type looks like housing ("Rack A cage 2"), you will see a gentle hint suggesting a bird-based name instead. It is only a hint — keep your name if you meant it.
  3. 3Step 2 — enter your hen and rooster counts, and how many eggs you collected today.
  4. 4Step 3 — read your First Read: instant stat cards on your hen-to-rooster ratio, your lay rate, and anything worth a second look, followed by a short note from Captain Coturnix.
  5. 5Finish, and you land on the dashboard with that conversation already saved in your Captain chat.
Tip: Skipped it, or want to start over? Everything the wizard creates can be added or edited by hand from My Coveys and Cages & Locations.
🏠

Your Dashboard

The dashboard is your home base. The top stat cards show Total Birds, Eggs Today, Health Alerts, Feed / Dozen, and Net Profit at a glance, with egg-production and finance trend charts just below. Everything else is one tap away from the feature cards.

  1. 1Use the Quick Log Eggs panel to record today’s collection without leaving the dashboard.
  2. 2The Feed / Dozen card is your feed spend over the last 90 days divided by the eggs you collected in the same window, with the per-egg figure underneath. It needs both feed purchases and egg counts logged — until then it shows a dash rather than a misleading zero. This is feed cost only: bedding, power and cartons are not in it.
  3. 3Check the Reminders panel for chores, candling dates, lockdown, and hatch day coming up in the next 7 days.
  4. 4Ticking a reminder off now writes it to a history — open "Recently done" under the panel to see what got done and when. The record survives the reminder being deleted, so tidying up your reminders never wipes the log.
  5. 5Did something nobody set a reminder for? "Log something you already did" records it with a date and, optionally, which cage or rack — that is your coop-cleaning record.
  6. 6Read Captain’s Daily Briefing (Max plan) — a short list of pointers Captain Coturnix leaves after reviewing your data each day.
  7. 7Watch the weather card for your farm’s current conditions and 7-day forecast, with heat alerts at 95°F and freeze watches at 36°F. Add your ZIP code once on the Account page to switch it on.
  8. 8When you cross a milestone, a short Captain-voiced notice appears near the top with a link straight to your new badge.
  9. 9Tap any feature card to open that tool. Cards marked with a lock are available on paid plans.
  10. 10Tap "Rearrange / Done" to drag cards into the order you like — your layout is saved to your account and follows you to any device.
  11. 11Scroll to My Farm Gallery to see photos of your coveys, birds, and breeding pairs.
Tip: Card order is saved per user, so set it up once and it stays put on your phone, tablet, and computer.
🐣

My Coveys

A covey is a group of birds you manage together — usually by breed, purpose, or pen. Coveys are the foundation most other tools build on. (You will still see the word "flock" in some of our articles — same thing.)

  1. 1Open My Coveys and click "+ Add Covey".
  2. 2Enter a name, breed, and the number of hens and roosters. Name it for the birds, not for the cage.
  3. 3Choose where it lives from the cage list — or click "+ Add a cage…" right inside the form to create the location without leaving the page.
  4. 4Add a photo if you like — it shows on the dashboard and in your Farm Gallery.
  5. 5Edit hen and rooster counts any time; losses you record elsewhere keep your headcount accurate.
Tip: On the Free plan you can keep one covey of up to 15 birds. Pro and Max are unlimited.
📍

Cages & Locations

Map your physical setup — cages, racks, pens, coops, brooders, and tractors — and see how full each one is.

  1. 1Open Cages & Locations and add each cage, rack, pen, or brooder, with an optional capacity.
  2. 2Nest items if you need to (for example, several cages on one rack).
  3. 3Assign a covey to a location from here or from the covey itself.
  4. 4Watch the occupancy-vs-capacity bars to avoid overcrowding, and check the "unassigned coveys" callout to make sure every group has a home.
🥚

Egg Collection

Log daily egg counts per covey and watch your production trends build over time. This feeds your dashboard stats, your lay rate, and your cost-per-egg.

  1. 1Open Egg Collection (or use Quick Log Eggs on the dashboard).
  2. 2With more than one covey you land on the whole-round form: one date, one row per covey, one shared note — so nobody gets skipped on a busy morning.
  3. 3Leave a row blank if you did not collect from that covey. Blank is not the same as zero, and a blank row is simply left alone.
  4. 4Re-open the round for a date you have already logged and it fills in what is there, so you edit instead of double-counting.
  5. 5Prefer one covey at a time? Click "Log Eggs" for the single form — and use "Log every covey at once" to switch back.
  6. 6Record the number collected and any that were damaged, then save — the production chart and your weekly lay rate update right away.
  7. 7Weighing a few eggs? Put the average in "Avg egg weight (g)" and how many were on the scale in "Eggs weighed". Jumbo selection is done on that number, and the dashboard tile weights a 40-egg average above a 3-egg one so the figure stays honest.
  8. 8Keeping celadon? Put how many of the collection were blue in the Celadon box. Celadon is recessive, so a celadon hen lays celadon every time — the count is a direct read on how many of your celadon hens are laying.
  9. 9Leave any of those three blank if you did not measure. Blank is not zero: a blank weight means "not weighed", not "weighed nothing".
  10. 10Review the charts to spot drops early so you can troubleshoot lighting, feed, or stress before it becomes a bigger problem.
  11. 11Open "Where They Went" underneath the chart to record what leaves the basket — sold, eaten, set for hatching, given away, broken, or discarded.
  12. 12Selling eggs on the Sales page deducts them here on its own — an order for 8 dozen takes 96 eggs out, linked to that order, and deleting the order puts them back. Starting an incubation batch does the same. You only log by hand what nobody else knows about: the ones you ate, gave away or dropped.
  13. 13If you sold eggs before this was automatic, the panel says so and offers to catch them up in one tap. Every deduction is an ordinary row you can delete if a count looks wrong.
  14. 14The "On hand" number is your collections minus everything you have logged out, so it answers "how many eggs do I actually have right now?".
  15. 15On a paid plan you can tag a movement with the covey it came from. Leave it as the pooled basket for kitchen and sales eggs; set the covey for hatching eggs, where the source pen is what makes the pedigree mean something.
Tip: A covey can hold one entry per day. If you collect morning and evening, edit the day’s entry and add the second pickup to it rather than logging twice. Lay rate is calculated from your hen count, so keep covey numbers current for the most accurate percentage — and logging every covey, not just the one you remember, is what keeps that number honest.
🐦

My Birds

Track individual birds when you want detail beyond the covey level — show birds, breeders, and anything you want to follow by name or band. This is also where you weigh birds and record a sale.

  1. 1Open My Birds and click "+ Add Bird".
  2. 2Record a band ID, name, sex, breed, hatch date, status, and a photo.
  3. 3Set the Variety to the bird’s actual colour morph — all 18 Coturnix varieties are there, grouped by family, and the badge on the card links straight to that variety’s guide.
  4. 4Record where a bird came from in "Came from" — a breeder, a hatchery, or your own pen — and their NPIP number if they gave you one. In a disease trace that is the first thing anyone asks for, and it is the only way to tell later which seller’s stock actually performed.
  5. 5Set Celadon separately. It is a recessive EGG trait, not a plumage colour, so a Rosetta hen can also be celadon: choose Celadon (two copies, lays blue), Carrier (one copy, lays normal but passes it on), Not celadon, or leave it unknown — which is the honest answer for most birds until you test-mate.
  6. 6Click the 📷 button on any bird to add extra photos — growth week by week, plumage coming in, an injury healing. The card photo stays the profile shot; these are the rest, each with an optional caption and date.
  7. 7Click the ⚖ button on any bird to weigh it: enter grams, the date, and an optional note. Every weigh-in is kept, so you get a growth curve rather than a single number that gets overwritten.
  8. 8The card face shows the latest weight and the gain per week, calculated from your own entries.
  9. 9Filter and search to find any bird quickly.
  10. 10Export your full bird list to CSV any time (paid plans) — latest weight, weigh-in date, variety and celadon status come along with it. Your data is always yours.
Tip: Weights are worth the minute they take: they are the fastest way to catch a bird going off feed, and they make a breeding record worth something to a buyer.
💵

Selling Birds

Paid plans

Sell named birds straight from My Birds. One dialog records the buyer, the order, the money, and marks the birds sold — instead of flipping statuses here and remembering to type the sale in somewhere else.

  1. 1On My Birds, click "💵 Sell birds" to turn on selection, then tick the birds going to this buyer.
  2. 2Click "Record sale" in the bar at the bottom.
  3. 3Pick an existing customer or type a new one — you can capture their email and phone right there.
  4. 4Enter the price and mark it paid or unpaid. Paid sales post the income to your Financials automatically.
  5. 5Save. The birds are marked sold and linked to the order, and a green banner offers "Open the receipt".
  6. 6Any sold bird keeps a permanent 🧾 link to the receipt for the sale that sold it.
Tip: Buyer details belong in Sales → Customers, not in a bird’s notes field — that way you can find them again, and their contact information stays off anything you print or share.
🩺

Health Tracker

Keep a record of observations, medications, and treatments, and get alerts when something needs attention.

  1. 1Open Health Tracker and add a record — note the bird or covey, the issue, and any treatment.
  2. 2Set a follow-up or next-due date so it surfaces in your reminders.
  3. 3Watch the Health Alerts stat on your dashboard; critical and high-severity items are flagged in red.
  4. 4Resolve alerts as you handle them to keep your list clean.
  5. 5Open the Water panel on the same page and log how much each covey drank, in gallons, litres, quarts or millilitres. One row per covey per day — saving the same day again corrects it rather than duplicating it.
  6. 6Leave a covey blank on a day you did not measure. Blank means unmeasured, not zero, and the last 14 entries stay on screen so a drop is easy to spot.
Tip: Logging health records alongside your egg data helps you (and Captain Coturnix) connect a production drop to its cause. Our symptom guides are a good second opinion — but they are keeper knowledge, not veterinary advice.
🛡️

Vaccines & Compliance

Paid plans

Keep vaccination, NPIP, certificate, biosecurity, and permit records in one place, with reminders before anything comes due or expires.

  1. 1Open Vaccines & Compliance.
  2. 2On the Vaccinations tab, log vaccinations, wormings, treatments, and checkups with a next-due date.
  3. 3If the product came from your medicine cabinet, pick it from the "From your medicine cabinet" dropdown — that fills the product name and works out the "Eggs & meat safe from" date using the withdrawal period you recorded on the bottle.
  4. 4While that date is in the future, a red warning sits at the top of Egg Collection naming the covey, the product, and the days remaining, so you cannot sell or eat treated eggs by mistake.
  5. 5On the NPIP & Biosecurity tab, record NPIP tests and certificates, biosecurity actions, and permits with a reference number and expiry date.
  6. 6Let the due-date and expiry tracking remind you before anything lapses.
Tip: The withdrawal date is stored on the treatment record, not read live from the bottle — so editing or using up that medicine later never moves the clearance date of a dose you already gave. Quail Keeper Max is a logbook, not a veterinarian: always follow the product label.
🧬

Breeding

Paid plans

Manage breeding pairs, track lineage, and log hatch results to optimize your genetics program.

  1. 1Open Breeding and create a pair, giving it a name and an optional photo.
  2. 2Use the "Sire — link the male bird" and "Dam — link the female bird" dropdowns to pick the actual birds. These two links are what build the family tree — a pair without them produces chicks with no pedigree.
  3. 3The band label boxes below the dropdowns are just text for your own reference. Typing a band number there does not link anything.
  4. 4Track each pair’s hatch results over time to find your most productive matches.
Tip: When a hatch off a pair is complete, tick "Also create individual bird records" — those chicks arrive with their sire and dam already set, which is far easier than tagging parents by hand later.
🌳

Pedigree, Certificates & Cage Cards

Paid plans

Tag each bird’s sire and dam, explore a four-generation ancestor chart, and hand a buyer something real: a printed certificate, a QR cage card, or a private link to the live record.

  1. 1Open Pedigree and pick a bird.
  2. 2Tag its sire and dam; repeat for ancestors to build the tree.
  3. 3Click through the four-generation chart to navigate the family line, and view a bird’s offspring list.
  4. 4Click "Create share link" to publish that one bird’s pedigree at a private web address. Copy it, preview it, and watch the view count as buyers open it.
  5. 5Open "Certificate" for a print-ready Certificate of Pedigree — letter size, with a QR code that leads back to the live record and space to sign.
  6. 6Use "Cage cards" to print QR cards for your cages; "Add QR links" creates the links for every bird that needs one in a single click.
  7. 7Revoke a share link any time from the same panel — the old link stops working immediately.
Tip: Shared pedigree pages show the bird, its ancestors, and your farm name only. Notes, contact details, finances, and the rest of your birds are never exposed, and the pages are not indexed by search engines.
🧪

Color Genetics Calculator

Predict Coturnix color outcomes with a Punnett-square engine before you pair birds up — no data entry needed, free on every plan.

  1. 1Open Color Genetics.
  2. 2Choose the inheritance mode (recessive, dominant, incomplete-dominant, or Z-sex-linked) and edit the allele symbols if you wish.
  3. 3Turn on the homozygous-lethal option for mutations like Italian or Tibetan when relevant.
  4. 4Read the genotype and phenotype ratios and the Punnett grid, plus the Coturnix mutation reference table.
Tip: The calculator is deliberately single-gene so results stay accurate — hobby Coturnix color genetics are still debated.
🌡️

Hatch Tracker & Incubation

Run incubation batches with day-by-day countdowns, candling logs, lockdown reminders, and hatch rates for every set.

  1. 1Open Hatch Tracker and start a batch — record the set date, how many eggs you set, and the source pair if known.
  2. 2Follow the built-in Coturnix incubation guide: about 99.5°F and 45–55% humidity for days 1–14, then ~99°F and 65–75% during lockdown (days 15–17).
  3. 3Log candling checks (eggs checked, fertile, infertile, quitters) — fertility updates automatically.
  4. 4Open "Daily log" on a batch to record temperature, humidity and how many times you turned that day. One reading a day is plenty: a spike on day 9 is invisible in an average, and the curve is what tells you why a hatch went wrong. Saving the same date again edits that day rather than adding a second row.
  5. 5Turns of 0 during lockdown is the correct answer, not a blank — record it.
  6. 6Name the Egg source when you start a batch — your own pen, or whoever you bought the eggs from. Once batches complete, the Hatch Rate by Egg Source table tells you whose eggs are worth the money. Bought eggs have no bird record and no breeding pair, so this is the only way they can be compared at all.
  7. 7Set the lockdown date when you start a batch. It defaults to day 14 for Coturnix; change it for bobwhite or button quail, which run longer, and the lockdown reminder and the progress bar both follow the date you chose.
  8. 8Watch for the day-7, day-14, and lockdown reminders so you never miss a milestone.
  9. 9After hatch, review your hatch rate and the fertility-by-source table to see which pairs produce best.
  10. 10Starting a batch takes those eggs out of your egg inventory automatically and tags them to the covey the hen belongs to — uncheck "Take these eggs out of egg inventory" if you bought the hatching eggs in rather than collecting them.
Tip: For the best hatch, set eggs that are less than ~10 days old and stored pointed-end down in a cool spot.
🌾

Feed & Cost Per Egg

Paid plans

Log feed purchases and instantly see your true cost per egg and per dozen — the number every keeper wants to know.

  1. 1Open Feed & Costs and record each feed purchase (type, quantity, and cost).
  2. 2Keep your egg logging current so the math has both sides of the equation.
  3. 3Read your cost-per-egg and cost-per-dozen, calculated from feed spend against eggs collected.
🧰

Equipment Inventory

Paid plans

An asset register for your gear — feeders, waterers, incubators, brooders, cages, lighting, scales, and tools. What you own, what it cost, where it lives, and when it was last cleaned.

  1. 1Open Equipment and click "Add Equipment".
  2. 2Record the name, category, quantity, and condition (new, good, fair, needs repair, or retired), plus brand, model, serial number, vendor, purchase date and price, and warranty expiry if you have them.
  3. 3Assign the item to one of your cages or locations so you know where it is.
  4. 4Set a cleaning or maintenance interval — daily through yearly — and tick the reminder box to have QKM nag you when it comes due.
  5. 5Click "Serviced" when you clean or service something; the date is stamped and the linked reminder rolls forward.
  6. 6Tick the expense box when adding a new item to post the purchase (price × quantity) straight to your Financials. It only ever appears on new items, so editing something never re-charges your books.
  7. 7Watch the "Needs attention" panel for overdue servicing and warranties ending in the next 60 days, and the summary tiles for items owned, replacement value, service overdue, and items needing repair.
  8. 8Mark an item retired instead of deleting it — it drops out of the list but stays in your history. Use "Show retired" to see it again.
Tip: Deleting a piece of equipment also removes its reminders, so you are not nagged about gear you no longer own.
💊

Medicine Cabinet

Paid plans

What treatments you actually have on hand — Blu-Kote, Corid, wormer, vitamins, electrolytes — when you bought them, when they expire, and how much is left. Vaccines & Compliance records the dose you gave a bird; this records the bottle it came out of.

  1. 1Open Medicine Cabinet and click "Add Medicine".
  2. 2Record the name and category (wound care, antibiotic, coccidiostat, wormer, mite & lice, vitamin or electrolyte, probiotic, disinfectant, first-aid supply), then the amount on hand and what you count it in — bottles, ounces, millilitres, grams, tablets, doses.
  3. 3Add the purchase date and the expiry date printed on the label. Those two dates are the whole point: an expired treatment is worse than no treatment when you need it at 10pm.
  4. 4Set "Warn me at" to the level where you want a low-stock nudge, or leave it blank for no alert.
  5. 5Enter the egg or meat withdrawal period from the label so it shows on the item every time you look at it.
  6. 6Tick the reminder box to be warned 30 days before it expires, and the expense box to post what you paid straight to Financials as a veterinary expense. The expense only ever posts on new items, so editing something never re-charges your books.
  7. 7Watch the "Needs attention" panel for anything expired, expiring within 60 days, or running low — and the summary tiles for what is in the cabinet, expired, expiring soon, and running low.
  8. 8Use "Binned it" or "Archive" when a bottle is gone. It leaves the working list but stays in your history; tick "Show archived" to see it again.
Tip: Log the dose you actually give under Vaccines & Compliance and keep the bottle itself here. Brand, lot number and where you store it are optional — but the lot number is the one you will wish you had written down if a product is ever recalled.
🍗

Meat Bird Tracking

Paid plans

Run grow-out batches with weight logs, feed-conversion ratio (FCR), and dress-out percentage.

  1. 1Open Meat Birds and start a grow-out batch.
  2. 2Say what the batch is for — meat, future layers, future breeders, birds to sell, or undecided. A non-meat batch still tracks weights and feed conversion; it just skips the processing step, so you can follow a brooder full of replacement pullets the same way.
  3. 3Log growth weights (in grams) and the feed used (in pounds) as the batch grows.
  4. 4See FCR (feed per pound of live weight) and dress-out % calculated for you.
  5. 5Use the target process date (~49 days) to plan, then record the process panel when it’s time.
💰

Financials

Track income and expenses so you always know your real profit. Sales you mark paid post here automatically.

  1. 1Open Financials and add income or expense entries with a date, amount, and category.
  2. 2Choose Mileage for a feed or delivery run and two extra boxes appear: miles driven and the rate you are claiming. Enter both and the amount fills itself in — we never hardcode a rate, because the IRS changes it and what you claim is your decision.
  3. 3Insurance and Repairs & maintenance are there too, so the categories line up with the Schedule F lines a small farm actually files.
  4. 4Watch your Net Profit stat and finance trend chart on the dashboard.
  5. 5Combine this with Feed & Costs and Equipment to understand your true margins per egg and per bird.
🧾

Sales, Customers & Receipts

Paid plans

Track orders, reservations, customers, and payments — post income to your books with a single click, and hand every buyer a proper receipt.

  1. 1Open Sales & Customers and add a customer.
  2. 2Create an order with line items; use status to handle reservations.
  3. 3Track payments, and when you click "Mark paid" the income posts straight to your Financials.
  4. 4Switch to the Customers tab to manage your buyer list.
  5. 5Click "🧾 Receipt" on any order for a clean, printable receipt with its own numbered label (QKM-0001, QKM-0002, and so on) under your farm name.
  6. 6Create a share link on the receipt to give your buyer a web copy they can pull up later, and revoke it whenever you like.
  7. 7Click "✉️ Email to buyer" to open a pre-filled message in your own email app — addressed to the buyer, with the receipt link, order number, date, and total already written, signed with your farm name. It sends from your address, so replies come to you.
  8. 8Click "📜 Bill of sale" on any order for the other document — a receipt proves payment, a bill of sale transfers ownership. It fills in both parties, the birds or goods sold, your most recent NPIP number if you keep compliance records, as-is language, and signature lines. Print two and both of you sign.
  9. 9Use the Waitlist tab for people asking for birds or eggs you do not have yet. Record who they are, how to reach them, what they want and how many, then move them from waiting to offered to fulfilled as you work down the queue. Anyone waiting more than 30 days is flagged.
  10. 10A waitlist entry does not need to be a customer, and it does not create an order. It exists so the ask made in April is still there in June.
Tip: A shared receipt names the buyer and can show their phone and email, so it is never indexed by search engines and only works for someone holding the link. Revoke it if in doubt.
⚓

Captain Coturnix — Your Personal Advisor

Paid plans

Captain Coturnix is your personal quail expert. Unlike a generic web search, he knows your coveys, your egg production, your health records, your breeding history — and the weather at your farm — so advice is tailored to your actual operation.

  1. 1Open Captain Coturnix from the dashboard.
  2. 2Ask anything — for example, "How can I improve my egg production?" or "Why did my hatch rate drop this week?"
  3. 3Your conversations are saved. The past-chats list (a sidebar on a computer, "☰ Past chats" on a phone) opens your most recent chat automatically; click any older one to pick up where you left off.
  4. 4Click "+ New chat" to start a fresh thread when you change subject.
  5. 5Captain remembers the important things about your operation between conversations, so you do not have to re-explain your setup every time.
  6. 6On the Max plan, read his Daily Briefing on the dashboard for proactive pointers based on your latest data — including heat and cold warnings from your local forecast.
  7. 7Act on the suggestions, then check back as your numbers change.
  8. 8Captain reads your whole logbook: coveys and lay rates, egg weight and celadon ratio, eggs on hand, water per covey, open health alerts, any withdrawal period in force, reminders due or overdue and what you have recently ticked off, incubation — including lockdown dates and your daily temperature and humidity readings — feed and medicine stock, equipment needing service, housing capacity, losses and their causes, compliance and NPIP expiries, grow-out batches with dress-out and feed conversion, bird varieties, weights and where each bird came from, your farm journal, and who is on your waitlist. The more of it you fill in, the more specific he gets.
  9. 9Two things he now watches on his own: a covey drinking noticeably less than its own norm — birds go off water first, so that is the earliest warning there is — and a hatch reaching lockdown, which is the one incubation date with a hard action attached.
  10. 10He also reads the business: what sold over the last 90 days and at what price, who buys more than once, what is still owed you, your expenses broken down by category, and your feed cost per dozen. If you have logged eggs but no feed purchases he will tell you the cost is unknown rather than invent one — and he will always call it FEED cost, because bedding, power and cartons are not in it.
  11. 11On the breeding side he reads your candling results, which is what separates an infertility problem (the pair) from a hatching problem (the incubator) — two very different fixes that look identical if all you count is chicks. He also reads sire and dam records, so he will mention it if a pair you have set up are siblings. Line breeding is a deliberate technique, not a mistake: he tells you what the pedigree shows and leaves the decision to you.
  12. 12He reads your journal too, so when the numbers move he looks for the power cut or the heat wave you wrote down before guessing at a cause.
Tip: The more you log — eggs, weights, health, finances, hatches — the sharper and more specific Captain’s advice becomes. He is a knowledgeable keeper, not a veterinarian; call a vet when a bird is in real trouble.
📖

Farm Journal

Paid plans

Write down what happened on a day. Every other page records a number; this records the reason.

  1. 1Open Farm Journal and click "+ New entry".
  2. 2Pick the date, write what happened, and add tags in your own words — "heat wave", "rack B", "vet". Tags are comma separated and turn into filter buttons once you have a few.
  3. 3Optionally tie the entry to a covey or a single bird. Leave both blank when it is about the whole farm.
  4. 4Add a photo if it helps — a setup change, a bird that looks off, storm damage.
  5. 5Filter by any tag to pull a thread back together months later.
Tip: Entries survive the covey or bird they mention being deleted — losing a bird should not erase the account of losing it, so the link just quietly drops. This is also the only narrative Captain can read: everything else he sees is numbers.
🏅

Achievements & Milestone Cards

Thirty-six milestone badges earned from your real records — your first egg, your thousandth, your first hatch, your first sale. Each one is dated, permanent, and can be turned into a card you can share or print.

  1. 1Open Achievements to see what you have earned and what is still locked, with your progress toward each one ("1,834 / 5,000").
  2. 2Badges come in six groups: Egg Production (totals, a 90% lay-rate week, a full week with no cracked eggs, and laying through December and January), Hatching (first hatch, hatch rates, hatching from a pair with both parents linked, three generations on the books, and the hen you hatched yourself who is now laying), Keeper Streaks, Covey Building (flock size, breeding pairs, banding every bird, weigh-ins, and a 350g heavyweight), Bird Care (nursing a bird back from illness or injury, and keeping the medicine cabinet stocked and in date), and Homestead Business (first sale, income milestones, and a month where the birds out-earned the feed bill).
  3. 3Click "📣 Share this card" on any earned badge to create a shareable card — the link is copied for you, ready to paste on Facebook or anywhere else.
  4. 4Use "Copy link" to grab it again, and "Preview / Print" to see the card or print it for a fair, a club, or the barn wall.
  5. 5Watch the view count to see how many people opened it.
  6. 6Click "Turn off sharing" whenever you want; the link stops working immediately.
  7. 7On a paid plan or trial, Captain also announces new badges on your dashboard as you earn them.
Tip: Badges are earned on every plan, including Free. A shared card shows your farm or keeper name, the badge, and the record behind it — never your email, notes, or finances.
⏰

Reminders & Notifications

Never miss a chore, candling date, lockdown, hatch day, or cage cleaning. Reminders appear on your dashboard and can arrive by email.

  1. 1Add a reminder with a title, notes, due date, and an optional repeat.
  2. 2See everything due in the next 7 days in the dashboard Reminders panel.
  3. 3Mark items done as you finish them; repeating reminders roll forward automatically.
  4. 4Hatch batches and equipment maintenance create their own reminders, so candling days and cleaning schedules show up without you adding them by hand.
💬

The Quail Keeper Community

A forum for keepers — ask a question, show off your covey, swap setups, and get answers from other keepers and from Captain Coturnix. It is free, and it uses the account you already have.

  1. 1Tap the Community card on your dashboard — you are signed straight in, no second password to remember.
  2. 2Introduce yourself, then browse the categories: eggs and laying, setups and cages, health, breeding and genetics, and show-off threads.
  3. 3Post a question in any category and Captain Coturnix will usually answer within seconds; other keepers weigh in from there.
  4. 4Health threads carry the same reminder our guides do: keeper knowledge is not veterinary advice.
Tip: Joining the community and using the app are the same account. Anyone who joins the forum gets the free Quail Keeper Max plan automatically.
🧮

Free Tools & Guides

A set of open tools and reference guides on the website — no login needed, free for everyone, and handy to send to a friend who is not tracking yet.

  1. 1Hatch Date Calculator — enter your set date and species to get your hatch day, lockdown date, and candling days.
  2. 2Feed Cost Calculator — work out what your feed is really costing you per bird and per dozen eggs.
  3. 3Can Quail Eat…? — a food-safety guide covering scores of foods, including the ones that are genuinely dangerous.
  4. 4Quail Symptoms — 32 symptom pages with likely causes, what to do now, prevention, and clear red flags for when a bird needs a vet.
  5. 5Coturnix Varieties — 18 variety pages tied to the color-genetics calculator.
  6. 6Answers — real questions from the community, answered and collected in one place.
Tip: These pages are public. Send a link to anyone — no account required.
📥

Importing & Exporting Your Data

Bring your spreadsheet history with you, and take your data with you whenever you want — it belongs to you.

  1. 1Use CSV import to bring your existing egg records in quickly.
  2. 2Export your records to CSV any time (paid plans) — including your bird list with weights.
  3. 3Your data is private — Quail Keeper Max never sells or shares it.
📲

Install It as an App

Quail Keeper Max works in any modern browser and can be installed on your phone, tablet, or computer — no app store needed.

  1. 1Look for the "Install App" button on the home page or dashboard, or use your browser’s "Add to Home Screen" / "Install" option.
  2. 2Once installed, it opens in its own window and lives on your home screen like any other app.
  3. 3Works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android, in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.
⚙️

Account & Settings

Manage your profile, your farm location, your plan, and your billing from one page.

  1. 1Click your email — or your farm name — in the dashboard header to open Account.
  2. 2Update your name, farm name, phone, avatar, and password.
  3. 3Add your ZIP code under Farm Location to switch on the weather card and let Captain factor your forecast into his advice. It is US-only, and your ZIP is all we ask for.
  4. 4View your current plan and trial status, any promo discount applied, and — if you have cancelled — the date your paid access ends. Cancelling never deletes anything: your records move to the Free plan.
  5. 5Use Manage Billing to change card, switch plans, or resume a cancelled subscription.
Tip: Have a promo or reward code? Enter it at checkout on the Pricing page and the discount is applied before you pay.
🆘

Getting Help

Stuck on something? Help is easy to reach.

  1. 1Open Support from the dashboard to send a ticket — we reply by email.
  2. 2Ask in the Community; other keepers and Captain Coturnix answer there daily.
  3. 3Browse the FAQ for quick answers to common quail and app questions.
  4. 4Email support@2bcreations.com any time.
Tip: Captain Coturnix can answer most quail-care questions instantly on paid plans — try him first.

Ready to put it to work?

Start tracking your flock free for 14 days — then keep going on the free plan for as long as you like.

Get Started Free