Ryan, excuse me for a few while I pick (no pun intended) myself off the
floor and dry my eyes ;-)

   Up until 5 years ago I lived on a 20 acre farm where, amongst livestock,
I had chickens. I didn't have time to go through all the responses but I
have not laughed this hard in a long time. Anyway, my only experience with
commercial growers is Willamette Egg Farms but those chickens are bred for
eggs and they all live in little cages so that doesn't apply to your
problem. Have you tried contacting major farms like Foster to see how they
deal with it? I could not make a suggestion without seeing your operation
and talking with your father. I'm real skeptical about the whole thing and
certainly herding chickens through <anything>. Though they will follow the
flock for food, they also peck and scratch at anything in sight. You might
consider selling them and getting into sheep, cattle, or horses. It would be
a heck of a lot easier ;-)

   If all else fails, you could always sell them to the USAF. They have a
large `chicken cannon' that fires birds into radomes and canopies ;-)

   - Tom

PSBS: Come to think of it, Foster may just be a large co-op. What I meant
is talking to other commercial farms to see if anyone is doing anything
innovative other than the old method. It's been my experience that, despite
the competition, folks are quick to help each other and share ideas.

At 08:24 PM 2/10/00 -0800, Ryan Pogge wrote:
>ok a thousand dollars to anyone who provides a solution which I use,
>poultry industry, very cost driven, every cent counts as the proffit margin
>on a bird is in the fractions of a cent per pound.
>
>problem:
> finding the average weight of about 10,000 birds in a chicken house a day
>before market, old solution wiegh out a hundred or so by hand... average the
>numbers.
>this is to make sure they are at optimum wieght to goto market to provide
>maximum proffit.
>
>how do you do it electronicly with little human effort?
>at first we tried an electronic scale placed on the floor, hoping that
>enough chickens would step on it... problem is chickens are
>territorial...... pretty much only one or two chickens step on it...
>
>and it has to be relitivly simple...i.e. no large robotic vacume cleaner
>robots that rove around and suck up chickens, weigh them, and spit them out
>:-)
>
>any ideas?
>oh and my fathers company is www.Mountaire.com  for anyone interested.
>
>Ryan


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Handley
New Age Communications
Since '75 before "New Age" and no one around here is waiting for UFOs ;-)