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Best Poultry Breeding & Pedigree Apps for Small Breeders (2027)

Coop Companion ·

Answer in 30 seconds

There's no single best breeding app. It depends on which job matters most to you. Flockstar (Breeder plan $79.99/yr, no free tier) is the most established all-rounder for hatch runs, fertility and hatch rates by source, three-generation pedigrees and certificates. Pen & Pasture ($45–63/yr, free tier) is the pick if you want color and genetics prediction. BroodBook (pay what you want, runs in the browser) is the only one here that advertises inbreeding warnings, but your data stays on one device. FarmKeep (free Basic, Premium $95.99/yr or $9.99/mo) suits mixed farms with several people logging. Coop Companion (free tier, Breeder $49/yr, Show $69/yr) is the pick if you sell hatching eggs with NPIP records or show your birds: it has public pedigree pages you can link in a listing, a sales ledger with NPIP fields, and a show log. It doesn't calculate inbreeding yet. A well-built spreadsheet still works fine for one or two pens.

Key takeaways

  • Decide what you need the records to do first: pick pairings by fertility and hatch rate, trace lineage, prove parentage to buyers, keep sales paperwork, or track show wins.
  • None of the apps reviewed lists a true inbreeding-coefficient (COI) calculator. BroodBook advertises inbreeding warnings and Pen & Pasture warns about known-lethal gene combinations.
  • Free tiers with real breeding features: FarmKeep Basic, Pen & Pasture Backyard, and Coop Companion Free. Flockstar has a one-week trial instead.
  • For buyer-facing pedigrees: Flockstar and Pen & Pasture Breeder Plus print certificates, FarmKeep downloads pedigree charts, Chicken Math shares public lineage links and passes ancestry to buyers on its own platform, and Coop Companion gives each bird a public pedigree link.
  • Coop Companion's honest gaps: no COI or genetics prediction, no native App Store/Play Store app (it's an installable web app), and fertility is reported per hatch, not yet rolled up per pen.

What a breeder actually needs from records

A layer-flock app tracks eggs per day. A breeding app has to answer different questions, and most of them come up months after the eggs were set. Which pen or pairing actually produced? That means fertile count and hatch rate tied back to the parents, not just to the incubator. Who is this bird? Lineage that survives three band changes and a grow-out pen full of near-identical cockerels. Should these two be mated? Some way of seeing how closely related a pair is before you put them together. Can I prove it to a buyer? A pedigree you can hand over or link in a listing, plus clean sales records if you ship eggs under NPIP.

The Livestock Conservancy's guide to selecting chicken breeding stock comes down to two record-keeping habits: keep records of laying, fertility and molt on the parent stock you use, and set up matings to avoid close inbreeding. An app is worth paying for if it makes those two habits easier than a notebook does. If you're still deciding how many pens to run and how to set them up, start with our breeding pen setup guide. The tools matter less than the plan.

One practical point most reviews skip: plenty of small breeders flock-mate, running one cock over several hens, so they know the sire and the pen but not the dam of every chick. Before you commit to any app, check how it handles "dam unknown, one of these hens." An app that forces you to pick a dam will fill your pedigrees with guesses.

Disclosure and how we judged

We make Coop Companion, one of the apps on this list, so read our verdicts with that in mind. To keep this fair, every competitor price and feature below comes from the vendor's own pricing page or App Store listing, checked in October 2026. Where a vendor's page doesn't mention a feature, we say "not listed" rather than assume it's missing. Prices change, so check the current price before you buy.

We judged each app on six things breeders care about: per-pen or per-pairing fertility and hatch rate, lineage depth, inbreeding or genetics tools, sharing pedigrees with buyers, sales and NPIP-style records, and price, including whether there's a usable free tier. We also noted the platform, because an iPhone-only app is no help if half your household carries Android.

At a glance: prices and breeding features (October 2026)

Flockstar. Keeper $49.99/yr; Breeder $79.99/yr (monthly billing is also offered). One-week trial, no free tier. Breeding features (hatch runs, fertility and hatch rates by source, candling/lockdown reminders, three-generation pedigrees, certificates) are on the Breeder plan. Web, iOS and Android. COI: not listed.

FarmKeep. Basic free (one farm, three active breeding groups, pedigree tracking, five invoices). Premium $95.99/yr billed annually or $9.99/mo billed monthly (unlimited breeding groups, multiple farms, unlimited invoices, admin and staff members). Multi-species; iOS and Android, works offline. Downloadable, shareable pedigree charts. COI: not listed.

BroodBook. Pay what you want, runs in a web browser, no account. Data is stored locally on your device with manual backup and restore. Family trees, breeding records with inbreeding warnings, hatch tracking that links chicks to parents, show history and judging notes, and a financial ledger.

Pen & Pasture. Backyard free (one pen, up to 10 active animals, up to 3 hatches a year, full lineage). Breeder $5/mo or $45/yr (per-pairing stats, full genetics predictions, sales tracking, CSV export). Breeder Plus $7/mo or $63/yr (per-dam productivity, printable pedigree certificates, directory listing). Plumage color prediction for chickens with lethal-mating warnings; multi-species. COI: not listed.

Chicken Math. Free download with Pro at $1.99/mo or $22.99/yr. iPhone and iPad. Pedigrees traceable across 5+ generations; when you sell a bird to another breeder on the platform, its ancestry goes with it, and you can share public lineage links with buyers. Built-in marketplace for fertile egg batches. New (released April 2026). COI: not listed.

Eggtrackr. Free download with Premium at $3.49/mo or $28.49/yr. Apple devices. Mainly a hatch tracker (candling, lockdown and hatch reminders, fertile/doubtful/removed egg tracking, stats by batch), plus breeder, bloodline and reproduction tracking. COI: not listed.

Coop Companion. Free (one pen, one active hatch with day 7/14/18 reminders that are never paywalled, roster, egg log, 4-H PDF, spreadsheet import). Breeder $6/mo or $49/yr (unlimited pens and hatches, sire/dam pedigrees, public pedigree pages, sales ledger with NPIP source-flock and testing-date fields, CSV and PDF export). Show $8/mo or $69/yr (adds a show log that totals the points you enter per bird). Installable web app on any phone; no native store app. COI: not available.

Flockstar: best established all-rounder

Flockstar is the most complete poultry-specific option on this list. On the Breeder plan you get multi-source hatch runs, fertility and hatch rates by source, so you can "see which pairings produce your strongest chicks," in its own words, candling and lockdown reminders, a three-generation pedigree for any bird, and shareable certificates for buyers. It runs on web, iOS and Android, and its App Store rating was 4.4 from 139 ratings when we checked. Reviewers regularly mention fast support from the developer.

The trade-offs are price and focus. There's no free tier, only a one-week trial, and the breeding features need the $79.99/yr Breeder plan, not the $49.99 Keeper plan. Its pricing page doesn't list inbreeding tools, show records or NPIP paperwork. If you breed but don't show or ship under NPIP, Flockstar is a safe choice. Our Coop Companion vs Flockstar comparison covers the differences line by line.

Pen & Pasture: best for color and genetics prediction

Pen & Pasture is the one to look at if you're working on color, whether that's plumage or the blue, green and olive eggs buyers ask for. Its genetics calculator predicts offspring plumage colors and patterns for chickens, shows the odds as Punnett squares, and warns about known-lethal combinations before you pair. The paid Breeder plan adds per-pairing lifetime stats, sales tracking and CSV export at $45/yr. Breeder Plus ($63/yr) adds per-dam productivity and printable pedigree certificates.

It's also multi-species (rabbits, goats, sheep and more), which helps if poultry is only part of your operation. The cautions: the free tier is small (one pen, ten animals, three hatches a year), and a prediction is only as good as the genotypes you enter. A calculator won't tell you a bird is carrying something you didn't know about. Our olive egger F1/F2 guide shows how to reason through an egg-color cross by hand, which is a good check on any calculator.

BroodBook: best for inbreeding warnings and owning your data

BroodBook is the outlier here. It's a browser app sold on a pay-what-you-want basis, with no account and no subscription. It's also the only app we reviewed that advertises inbreeding warnings on breeding records, and one of the few that lists show history and judging notes. It links hatched chicks to their parents and includes a full financial ledger.

The catch is in the design: all data stays on the device you use, with manual backup and restore. That's great if you distrust cloud services. It's risky if a browser update, a cleared cache or a dead laptop is all that stands between you and five years of pedigrees. If you choose it, back up on a schedule. And whatever any app says, judging relatedness still depends on how complete your pedigrees are. Our line breeding vs inbreeding guide explains where planned line breeding ends and risky inbreeding begins.

FarmKeep: best for mixed farms and several people logging

FarmKeep isn't poultry-specific, and that's the point. It handles many species, lets several members log against one farm on Premium, and works offline on iOS and Android. For poultry it tracks breeding pairs, incubation timelines with set, lockdown and hatch-date reminders, and hatch rates, and it produces downloadable pedigree charts you can share.

The free Basic plan is generous enough to try properly (three active breeding groups, pedigree tracking and a 14-day Premium trial), but unlimited breeding groups, more than one farm, unlimited invoices and admin or staff members need Premium at $95.99/yr, the highest annual price on this list. Its pages don't list inbreeding tools or show records. Pick FarmKeep when the goats and the chickens share a barn and you want one app for both.

Chicken Math and Eggtrackr: best low-cost options for iPhone

Chicken Math is the cheapest paid option here at $22.99/yr for Pro, and it has an interesting idea: pedigrees go back five-plus generations, and when you sell a bird to another Chicken Math user, its ancestry transfers with it. You can also share a public lineage link with a buyer. There's also a marketplace for fertile egg batches. It only came out in April 2026, so it has little track record, and its listing doesn't spell out which features are free and which are Pro.

Eggtrackr ($28.49/yr Premium) is mainly a hatch tracker. It's built around following each egg through candling (fertile, doubtful, removed, hatched) and keeping stats by batch, and it adds breeder, bloodline and reproduction records. Both apps are Apple-only. Eggtrackr suits you if you mainly hatch and keep light lineage records; Chicken Math is the stronger of the two on lineage. Neither lists NPIP sales paperwork.

Coop Companion: best if you sell under NPIP or show your birds

Here's what we actually do well. The hatch tracker is free forever, with day 7/14/18 candling and lockdown emails that are never paywalled. Each hatch records set, fertile and hatched counts and reports the percentage of fertile eggs that hatched. Birds carry sire and dam, and any bird you mark public gets a pedigree page with a three-generation tree and its show placings. That's a link you can paste straight into a hatching-egg or started-bird listing. The sales ledger records the buyer, items, price, NPIP source flock and testing date, and exports to CSV or an NPIP-style PDF. On the Show plan, the show log records every show, class, variety and placing, and totals the points you enter per bird. No other app on this list combines buyer-facing pedigrees, NPIP sales records and a show log.

Here's what we don't do yet. There's no inbreeding coefficient and no relatedness warning. If that's your deciding feature, BroodBook advertises warnings today. There's no color or genetics prediction; Pen & Pasture has that. Fertility is reported per hatch, not yet rolled up per pen or pairing, so Flockstar and Pen & Pasture are ahead on "which pairing works" stats. Pen hens are stored as band numbers rather than linked bird records, and there's no printable pedigree certificate yet. We also don't have a native App Store or Play Store app. Coop Companion is a web app you install to your home screen. Points in the show log are numbers you enter from the show's awards. We don't calculate them for you.

Who it fits: breeders who sell eggs or birds and want pedigrees and sales records in one place, exhibitors who want wins tied to the bird's pedigree, and anyone with one pen who wants a free hatch tracker that's actually free. Our Coop Companion vs BroodBook and vs FarmKeep comparisons go into more detail, and the pricing page lists exactly what each plan includes.

The spreadsheet option

For one or two pens, a spreadsheet is still a respectable choice. It's free, it's yours, and it will outlast any app company. A setup that works has one row per bird (band, hatch date, sire, dam or "Pen B," breed, variety, sex, status), one row per hatch (pen, set date, eggs set, fertile at candling, hatched), and one row per sale. Add a pen column to every hatch row and a pivot table gives you per-pen fertility in a few clicks.

Spreadsheets break in predictable ways. Pedigrees beyond the parents mean manual lookups. History gets overwritten unless you copy the sheet every season. The barn copy and the house copy drift apart. And there's no way to show a buyer a pedigree without sending them the whole file. If you're starting on paper, our free breeding pen record sheets give you printable pen and hatch forms, and Coop Companion's spreadsheet import will bring your bird and egg-log rows in later if you outgrow them.

Frequently asked questions

Which poultry app tracks inbreeding?
Of the apps we reviewed, only BroodBook advertises inbreeding warnings on breeding records. Pen & Pasture warns about known-lethal gene combinations in its genetics calculator, which is a different thing. None of the vendor pages we checked (Flockstar, FarmKeep, Pen & Pasture, Chicken Math, Eggtrackr) lists a full inbreeding-coefficient (COI) calculation, and Coop Companion doesn't have one yet. Any warning is only as good as your pedigree records, so record sires and dams consistently.
Which poultry breeding app has a free tier?
FarmKeep Basic (one farm, three active breeding groups, pedigree tracking), Pen & Pasture Backyard (one pen, 10 active animals, 3 hatches a year, full lineage) and Coop Companion Free (one pen, one active hatch with never-paywalled reminders, roster, egg log, 4-H export) are free with no time limit. BroodBook is pay what you want. Chicken Math and Eggtrackr are free downloads with paid upgrades. Flockstar has no free tier, only a one-week trial.
Which app lets me share a chicken's pedigree with a buyer?
Flockstar (Breeder plan) and Pen & Pasture (Breeder Plus) produce pedigree certificates. FarmKeep produces downloadable pedigree charts. Chicken Math offers public lineage links for buyers and transfers a bird's ancestry when you sell it to another Chicken Math user. Coop Companion gives any bird you mark public its own pedigree page (a three-generation tree plus show placings) that you can link in a sale listing.
What's a good Flockstar alternative?
It depends on why you're leaving. For a free tier with breeding records, try FarmKeep Basic, Pen & Pasture or Coop Companion. For color genetics, try Pen & Pasture. For inbreeding warnings and data kept on your own device, try BroodBook. If you also sell hatching eggs under NPIP or show your birds, Coop Companion adds the sales ledger and show log that Flockstar's pricing page doesn't list.
Do I need an app at all, or will a spreadsheet do?
With one or two pens and no sales, a spreadsheet with one row per bird, per hatch and per sale works well. Apps start to pay off when you're tracing pedigrees past the parents, comparing fertility across several pens, sharing pedigrees with buyers, or keeping records on a phone in the barn.

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