Hands-Off Chicken Coop

[HandsOffCoop]

I am currently a senior at LSU graduating this May. For my senior project, I am a working in a team of mechanical and electrical engineering students to design and build a fully autonomous chicken coop. Our hands-off chicken coop will be able to preform chicken care and chores for seven days with no human input.

Our coop design will include:
Safe areas for sleeping, movement, and laying
Automated feeding/watering
Automated door operation
Automated egg collection
Temperature controlled egg storage
Ease of waste removal
Programable control system to allow owners to control coop operation

My team has become familiar with current coop technologies in order to understand what features we want to include in our design. However, feedback from backyard chicken owners is essential to typical chicken care as well as chicken coop design.

We have created two surveys. The first 10 question survey focuses on typical daily chicken care and will allow us to have a better understanding of what it means to own chickens.
The second is a 4 question survey specific to design features we have been brainstorming for the autonomous design.

Chicken Care Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T6JWC5J

Coop Design Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z8GXJ5X

Any feedback, additional comments or feature suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I would be happy to answer any questions about our current design ideas.

Thank you and Geaux Tigers!

 

[redsoxs]

Sounds like an ambitious project and I wish you success. The most exciting part for me would be the egg refrigeration option. I typically don't refrigerate my eggs but I also store them the cool house after collection. On hot days when I'm not able to get out and collect, or if I have to be gone a day or two, it would be reassuring to know the eggs weren't developing salmonella in the hot coop. Good luck!

 

[Korzak]

I would strongly urge you to talk to local farmers, or visit a farm that raises chickens and does tours.

 

[Howard E]

Interesting project. FWIW, there is a difference between what is possible and what is practical and necessary. Much of what you describe is possible and from a learning objective standpoint, would be a fun thing to develop. As long as you know the difference, no harm done.

A good example might be the case of the automatic door. I went out to shut the coop the other evening and when I did my head count, came up one bird short. I went looking and found her trapped inside a fenced off area. Freed up, she high tailed it to the coop and roost. Had I not been out to check on things, she most likely would have not made it through the night, succumbing to some form of night time predator.

Do you have a number of birds in mind? Big difference if it is 5 or 50....or even 500? Any bigger than that and most commercial layer houses already have all you describe, so you would be reinventing the wheel.

 

[tmarsh83]

Kind of built my coop with this in mind for when I traveled for work anyway. A few bunk or gravity pipe feeders, a rain catchment watering system, coop door on a motor. and a rollout nest box setup pretty much makes for an autonomous coop. Doesn't have to be over the top, just well thought out.

Judging by the questions in your survey you're looking to make a lot of things automated that don't need to be.

Automated and autonomous aren't the same thing, and simpler is ALWAYS better.

 

[ocap]

from my experience with predators, the automatic door I bought was a waste of money. I can't let them free range, wire roof on the run works best for about the same cost as an automatic door

 

[Howard E]

I do have one suggestion for your team to consider.........built a better rat trap!

http://www.victorpest.com/rat-zapper-ultra-rat-trap-brzu001promo

Take an electronic rat trap of the type shown above.......convert it to an AC unit so the batteries don't go dead, and figure out a way to dump it so it so a person doesn't have to and then have it reset itself.

It can dump into a small trash can that you drop a chunk of dry ice into and seal up (dump zapped rats into a container filled with CO2 gas so they don't come back from the dead).

We recently found out the entire city of Chicago and adjoining suburbs are infested with rats, so this has commercial applications as well.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...hickens-restricted-because-of-rats-in-my-town

 

[Chicken man15]

Autonomous coop would be great!!
I don’t think that you really need a coop door as some people have bad predators. But would be nice to have on it but a feature to shut it off via phone app.

 

[jthornton]

I do have one suggestion for your team to consider.........built a better rat trap!

http://www.victorpest.com/rat-zapper-ultra-rat-trap-brzu001promo

Take an electronic rat trap of the type shown above.......convert it to an AC unit so the batteries don't go dead, and figure out a way to dump it so it so a person doesn't have to and then have it reset itself.

Remove the batteries and wire it up to a 6v wall wort... AC powered now.

JT