The SimFlock simulation model

About SimFlock

SimFlock is a stochastic dynamic simulation model of a traditional African scavenging chicken production system. In addition to most other livestock simulation models available, the model allows for representation of the uncertainty concerning the true values of biological parameters like growth and mortality rates.

For a description of the model, reference is made to Pedersen & Kristensen (2002): Dynamic modelling of a traditional African chicken production system.

User interface

SimFlock has a graphical user interface with visual representation of all birds and eggs of the flock being simulated. The buttons of the upper quarter of the screen represent the management strategy of the farmer, the environment, hyper parameters for the biological parameters of the model, the present state-of-nature (set of biological parameters specified directly or drawn at random from the hyper parameters), the definition of a simulation job (number of states-of-nature, number of replications and number of days to simulate), the prices and other economic conditions and, finally, the results of the simulation.

By clicking one of the buttons of the upper quarter (for instance the one representing the simulation job) will display a pop-up window where the properties of the job may be specified. Most of the facilities are also available from the menus.

By clicking any of the birds or eggs of the window will display a pop-up with the attributes of that particular bird or egg. The values may also be edited, if desired.

Technical details, download and installation

The SimFlock software has been programmed in Java and it is therefore supported by multiple platforms. It comes as one single jar-file, chick.jar, which just has to be saved to the hard disk. Before the model may be used, you must install at least the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from Sun. If you already have a Java Runtime Environment or a Java Development Kit (JDK) you don't have to install the JRE provided here. If you use an other operating system than Windows, you must download the appropriate JRE directly from Sun. Having installed the JRE (or the JDK) and saved the chick.jar file to disk, you may run the software just by double-clicking the file icon for chick.jar.