Track: Automation and Control

Abstract

The huge cost and high labor demand associated with the current deep litter system of poultry farming pose a great challenge to poultry farming. These drawbacks which currently threaten this system of farming, have been attributed to the over-involvement of humans in almost all aspects of the operation of this farming system. The consequences are increased disease outbreaks, weakness, and poor bird feeding. An automated poultry feeding system is developed and presented in this paper to ameliorate some of these challenges. The proposed system mimics the roles of real-life poultry attendants in the delivery of feed and water to birds at a specified interval of time. The system senses the level of feed and water in the respective trough and intelligently dispenses water and feed in response to the sensed levels. The current system can effectively sense and predict the farm's level of feed and water at an accuracy of 98.79% and dispense the same within a response time of 50-60ms.