ok here goes idea is water put the water blow ground in cups at every cup station put a scale and only water at certain hours of the day when the chicken goes to drink the scale would register the wheight. victor faria ----- Original Message ----- From: "William K. Borsum" To: Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 11:48 PM Subject: Re: Chickens [NOT OT!] > A couple of assumptions: > chickens roam around in the barn--not caged like egg layers. > Chickens like to eat/drink. > > Two sections to the barn area with a chute in between. > Scale is in the chute. > chute is designed so only one chicken can be in the chute and on the scale > at a time. > Water is on one side, food on the other. > Every chicken WILL move through the chute at least once a day and get weighed. > probably multiple weighings per bird, therefore increased accuracy/sample > size. > Use the scale you've got. > > Now for the pic part--stick a keeloq or other rf ID tag on each bird for ID > that triggers the scale when it goes through. > Track weight gain per bird on an individual basis. > Gate the outlet of the chute to a holding area for the nice fat ones, or > for the underweight culls, by age of bird, etc. > > Gee, that ought to be worth free chicken for life. :-) > Kelly > > > > > At 08:24 PM 2/10/00 -0800, you 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 > > > > > William K. Borsum, P.E. -- OEM Dataloggers and Instrumentation Systems > & San Diego, California, USA >