The scale on the ground idea is not so bad if you just have a
way to get the chickens to get on the scale.

How about bribing the chickens by using a little food as
incentive? Imagine a small enclosure with motor operated
door. Just outside the open door you have a machine that
periodically deposits some chicken feed. When you sense
that a chicken has come over to get the chicken feed, you
deposit a bit of chicken feed *inside* the enclosure,
right on top of the electronic weighing scale.

When a chicken enters the weighing area you bring down the door
so only one chicken is inside at a time. The chicken
is now on the scale so you weigh it. When you finish
weighing, you open the door so the chicken can leave
after eating.

You might be able to eliminate the door
if you already know pretty much what the average bird weighs,
since then you could tolerate readings based on several
birds. This will not work if the weight range is too
large.

Continue the procedure at random intervals
Keep a running average of weight. Once you
have an average based on, say 100 valid readings,
display it, send it to a PC, or whatever you want done
with it.

When do I get my $1,000 bucks???

Fr. Tom McGahee




-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Pogge <rpogge@MICHAELANGELO.NET>
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thursday, February 10, 2000 8:32 PM
Subject: Chickens [NOT OT!]


>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
>