Recent content by MauriceR

That is an interesting idea. It could potentially work for some hen box layouts. Ideally you would probably want a little tunnel that goes to all your hen boxes and the hen boxes are alone without any food/water. This way you know the hens will have to go in and out somewhat frequently. I...

The initial price I guessed at was just that a guess based on the price of some of the major components. If I go to a central hub that you then plug multiple scales into that would cut the cost down quite a lot. If people have a certain price per nest box in mind that you think is fair let me...

I haven't yet. This idea is on the backburner for now. I have been thinking about it in the background of my brain though. I have some ideas on how to make multiple units much cheaper. Instead of a neat phone that connects to your app I might save spreadsheets to a SD card. I suspect this...

Wow, I have never seen that with my hens. I suspect your hen boxes are bigger since I don't think that would be possible in mine (maybe 2 could squeeze in, but I've never seen that). That said as long as they were putting all their weight on the floor I think this should mostly work. It...

The main goal was detecting how many eggs each chicken laid. That is different than saying this particular egg came from this particular chicken (this might be possible, but I'd need to do testing). You would certainly be able to know if a particular chicken lays small, medium, or large eggs...

Each bird would have an RFID tag (these cost under 50 cents each). And each nest would have a scale and rfid reader. Then the software would have enough information to say how many eggs each chicken laid. Hopefully that make it clear, but if not trust me there is enough info here to do it as...

Aart, thanks for the feedback! There are a lot of sources for different kinds of RFID tags specifically designed for chickens/birds. I suspect those giant chicken farms use these tags so they are quite inexpensive. I don't think a bunch of readings with no eggs laid is an issue at all. That...

Thanks for the feedback. It is really helpful. I've started to come around to the same thought at you. Many/most small flock owners don't care about this data or can figure it out without this tech. Personally, I think having the data would be fun, but it seems most don't think that way...

Not really because the smart scale can handle accumulating the wights over time. Let me give an example. Imagine the scale says 1 pound. Then that reading goes to 3 pounds. That looks like a 2 pound chicken so it scans for the rfid tag and finds it is number 1234589 which you have set to be...

Thanks for the feedback! We have 11 chickens, but this project is enough work that I'd rather not do it just for us. I'd be happy to buy one if it exists, but couldn't find one. As I said in my first post the only thing like this I could find was that other paper I linked to. Did you read...

Does anyone know of a commercial or DIY solution for this? I've done some searching and found a paper from a University that does something like this, but didn't find any other solutions. The solution in that paper seems complex since it requires a custom lay box solution. It seems like...