Description
Our project is to reduce chicken mortality by aerial predators for the sponsor's poultry farm. Constraints include the need to do no harm to birds of prey, as raptors are federally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and account for the pasture's large wide-open space. The customer also would like a solution that allows the chickens to live a more “free range” lifestyle than the current method of chicken tractors. The solution will have to be able to handle normal outdoor weather conditions. The sponsor also addressed mobility needs of the device. Due to the employment of a rotational grazing system in the poultry farm, the farm animals are constantly moved between different sections of the pasture to allow efficient utilization of the land. Therefore, the device needs to be regularly moved to different portions of the pasture by a tractor or manually. The effective area covered will be around 1 acre for each round of rotational grazing as estimated by the sponsor. The solution that uses minimum labor would be ideal for the sponsor. Considering the poultry farm specifically, the device must not cause significant distress for chickens. The current solutions include chicken coops that can be moved around manually, but they don't meet the low labor requirements. The ideal solution should be below $3000 as specified by the sponsor. In the current market, there are limited automated or high mobility products to achieve the required function according to the user's needs.