Client work: Tournesol Farms
Building ChickID for Tournesol Farms: Practical AI for the Farm
At David Norton Consulting, we believe the best technology projects are the ones that meet people directly inside the work they are already doing. For Tournesol Farms, that meant building a tool that feels useful in a barn, at a kitchen table, in a feed-store parking lot, or beside a brooder full of newly hatched chicks.
That tool is ChickID, an AI-powered chick breed identifier built for Tournesol Farms. It helps backyard flock owners, homesteaders, hatcheries, and small farms make a better first-pass identification of day-old chicks from photos.
The Problem: Chicks Are Hard to Identify Early
Anyone who has ordered a mixed batch of chicks knows the moment: the birds arrive, they are active and healthy, but several breeds look nearly identical at a young age. Feather color, markings, comb development, leg color, feathered legs, and body shape can all matter, but those signs are not always obvious in the first few days.
ChickID does not try to replace an experienced breeder or guarantee a perfect answer from one photo. Instead, it gives the user a useful starting point. The app accepts chick photos, asks for optional context such as egg color or known parent breeds, and returns a practical identification report with likely breed matches, a sex estimate, visual observations, and confidence notes.
Sex estimates are most reliable for autosexing or color-sexable crosses; for many standard breeds, a confident call still takes a few weeks of growth. ChickID gives an early read, not a final answer.
The Build: Simple Interface, Useful Intelligence
The user experience is intentionally direct: upload up to six chick photos, add a few optional details, and run the identification. The goal was not to create a complicated AI dashboard, but to build a farm-friendly tool that someone can understand immediately.
That simplicity matters. Many farm and small-business systems fail because they add too much administrative friction. ChickID is designed to be useful from the first click: clear instructions, a familiar upload flow, and a report that explains what the AI saw rather than just returning a guess.
Beyond the App: Payments, Email, and Farm Operations
ChickID is the public face of a deeper operational system we built for Tournesol around real farm workflows: customer intake, inventory, orders, notifications, and payments. The value comes from connecting a simple front-end tool to practical business systems behind the scenes.
For payments, we use a custom Square integration we built specifically for Tournesol’s order flow rather than relying on a generic checkout plugin. That lets us tailor the workflow to Tournesol’s actual sales process: deposits, order records, checkout links, invoice tracking, and Square webhook handling that records key payment events without turning WordPress into the source of truth for sensitive payment data.
This approach gives the farm flexibility. Some products can use checkout-style payment links. Other orders can be reserved first, weighed or finalized later, and then invoiced through Square based on the final amount. That is especially important for farm products where inventory, package weights, pickup timing, and delivery details can change after the initial customer request.
Email processing follows the same principle: route operational messages to the right mailbox instead of scattering them across personal inboxes. Tournesol notifications are directed toward the farm sales workflow, with domain email configured through Microsoft 365 and deliverability handled through proper DNS alignment. The goal is simple: when a customer submits an order, requests access, or interacts with the site, the message lands where the team can act on it.
Why This Matters
Small farms and local businesses do not need bloated software. They need tools that respect the way they already work, reduce manual follow-up, and create a better customer experience without adding unnecessary complexity.
ChickID is a good example of that philosophy. It uses AI where AI is genuinely helpful, keeps the interface approachable, and sits alongside a larger operational system for payments, email, and order management.
That is the kind of work we enjoy building: practical, custom software that helps real businesses serve real customers.
Try ChickID here:
https://tournesolfarms.org/chickid/
Free to start, with affordable add-on credits if you’re identifying a full hatch.
Building something practical like this for your farm or small business? Let’s talk.
Built by David Norton Consulting for Tournesol Farms.
