Chicken Feeder Survey - Redesigning the Chicken Feeder

Hello, everyone.

I am taking an engineering class which requires me to either invent a new product or innovate a current one. My partner and I decided to redesign the chicken feeder, based on his knowledge of the subject and willingness to do it. We do have to have data to back up our choice, as we need to solve a problem. That is why it would be amazing if you could fill out our survey to help us know what people really want in their chicken feeder.

You can find the link the the Google Forms survey here

http://goo.gl/forms/t22W72loDi

Thanks, please answer truthfully and honestly.

I did the forum for you

It is great that students are interested in designing a new chicken feeder. Frankly, I have seen a lot of ingenious chicken feeder designs already, everybody has a slightly different design that suits his/her needs and set up, so one more feeder design may or may not be very exciting.

What hasn't been successfully invented is a livestock water feeder that will not freeze in the winter, does not require electricity/gasoline/propane, will keep the water above freezing even without much solar energy, and don't need to bore in to the center of earth to harvest geothermal heat. Is there a way to eliminate hauling hot water a few times a day through snow and rigid temperature to keep the animals alive for those people whose animals are located at a shaded and powerless area? This type of water feeder will be beneficial to poultry, horses, and other farm animals.

I have looked at the double buckets with foam insulation design, phase changing material as the heating element (think sodium acetate, aka Hot Ice), compost heating, partial solar heating using the greenhouse twin-wall panels, and even researched the ice fishing insulated buckets. So far, I haven't been able to come up with an elegant, sustainable, and cost effective way to solve this problem, being that my chicken coop is located at a sunless and powerless area.

If you and your classmate can use your engineering skills to solve this "pain point/problem", I am sure you can file for a patent for your invention and a lot of people will be happy to use this product. Good Luck!