Chicken Nest Box That Reports How Many Eggs Each Chicken Lays

[MauriceR]

I can see one issue with this in my setup - quite often I see one girl go in the nest, then another, and sometimes a third... I've even seen 4 of them in at one time... dogpile!! and they go out separately.

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 wouldn't be hard to see that multiple hens were piled in there because the additional weight would make it pretty clear. The only issue I can see is their bands might not be read if they actually lay eggs in this configuration.

If there are issues you might want to reduce the size of the hen boxes.

 

[MauriceR]

Have you visited with a commercial egg producer about this yet? Sometimes it’s difficult to get information without giving your idea away, but it can be done. My husband is working on his own idea that would be for people’s homes, but he was able to get all sorts of helpful information from companies that do something similar commercially, without being specific as to what he’s developing.

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 would work better for big productions who might want to check in on everyone once a week or something.

I've done several apps before so if I need one for this I'd probably do it myself. It usually turns out better that way. That said I would certainly verify the hardware works as expected and do more market research before making an app because you are correct that is a lot of work.

 

[jolenesdad]

The dogpile like that I think is why breeders use a nest box that closes after entering? I could be totally wrong but I’ve been (lightly) researching breeding for egg production and closing nest boxes are mentioned a lot to track eggs and hens.

Personally, I get two in a super tiny nest box sometimes, they just like to do it.

 

[Melky]

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 something I could build by putting a cheap band on each chicken leg and then putting a scale that reads those bands in each nestbox. So it would basically scan the tag on the chicken and then record weight before and after that chicken sat in the box. Then I could determine if it left an egg in the box. Then I'd upload this data to your smartphone so you could see how many eggs each chicken laid.

That said if something like this already exists I don't feel I'd need to reinvent the wheel.

If nothing like this exists would this be something people are interested in me putting on Kickstarter? I've done several successful Kickstarters, but nothing related to out chickens. A really rough guess at price would be $70 per scale with a bunch of the chicken bracelets included.

Like but can you get the pricing down? Cuz I can probably guess by my breed and the egg color without such a purchase.

 

[RustyBucketFarmGirl]

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 "Fluffy" in the app. If the scale then goes back to 1 pound we know Fluffy didn't lay an egg. If the scale drops to 1.1 pound then Fluffy did lay an egg that weighted 0.1 pounds.

Using this method not only would we know which chickens laid eggs we would also know how many eggs there are in each nesting box, how much each of your chickens weigh, which nesting box is most popular, and several other things that could be derived from this log of weights and chicken tags.

Your phone could then display how many eggs all your hen nests had in the past week and how many eggs came from each hen.

It’s an interesting idea. Especially at the beginning when you have all brown layers and unsure who is and isn’t laying. Not sure once they all start laying it would still be as useful.

However it could help you wean out chickens that don’t lay or have slowed greatly with age making the culling decision a bit easier on full scale homesteads.

 

[aart]

The dogpile like that I think is why breeders use a nest box that closes after entering? I could be totally wrong but I’ve been (lightly) researching breeding for egg production and closing nest boxes are mentioned a lot to track eggs and hens.

Yes, 'trap nests' are used to ID who is laying which egg and/or to collect eggs from specific birds for hatching. Often they are roll out' type nests to avoid egg breakage. Takes frequent monitoring so birds don't stay locked up too long. Can be stressful until birds get used to them....tricky to build too.

 

[sylviethecochin]

Could you put the scale outside the nestbox? (So that the hen would have to step on it to get in?)

1. Chicken hops on scale to get in. Tag is read. Weight is read.
2. Chicken sits in nestbox, lays egg.
3. Chicken leaves, standing on scale again. Tag is read. Weight is measured. If no weight loss is measured, reading discarded.

I think that would solve the dogpile problem, as the chickens would enter and exit at different times, but it's just an idea. One issue is that I'm not sure the weight recorded would be accurate, since they'd be walking across the scale.

 

[Kat2141]

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 wouldn't be hard to see that multiple hens were piled in there because the additional weight would make it pretty clear. The only issue I can see is their bands might not be read if they actually lay eggs in this configuration.

If there are issues you might want to reduce the size of the hen boxes.

I don't have problems with it (and neither do they), I was just saying that it could cause issues with your device. Others may have hens that do the same thing. I wouldn't have a need to get something like that anyway for the few chickens I have. Good luck with your endeavor.

 

[MauriceR]

Yes, 'trap nests' are used to ID who is laying which egg and/or to collect eggs from specific birds for hatching. Often they are roll out' type nests to avoid egg breakage. Takes frequent monitoring so birds don't stay locked up too long. Can be stressful until birds get used to them....tricky to build too.

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 know. I know lower is always better, but it is helpful to know what people this is fair.

 

[MauriceR]

Could you put the scale outside the nestbox? (So that the hen would have to step on it to get in?)

1. Chicken hops on scale to get in. Tag is read. Weight is read.
2. Chicken sits in nestbox, lays egg.
3. Chicken leaves, standing on scale again. Tag is read. Weight is measured. If no weight loss is measured, reading discarded.

I think that would solve the dogpile problem, as the chickens would enter and exit at different times, but it's just an idea. One issue is that I'm not sure the weight recorded would be accurate, since they'd be walking across the scale.

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 know our coop isn't laid out like this. Now maybe you could just set the scale in a high traffic areas and it would read the chickens often enough, but that is much less of a sure thing so I'd need to to a lot more testing and it might not work in some coops if there was no high traffic area. Also as you mentioned I'd need to do some tests on my load cell scale system to see how well it works with walking chickens.

Thanks for all the brainstorming ideas!