poultry

2 Articles

Automate Your Poultry With CoopCommand

May 8, 2021 by 24 Comments

A fresh egg taken from beneath a slumbering hen is something to which the taste of a supermarket equivalent rarely compares. The satisfaction of having a contented flock does come at a price though, in the form of constant monitoring and husbandry of your poultry’s well-being. It’s a problem that [hms-11] has tried to address with CoopCommand, a system to automate the monitoring of and environment within a chicken coop. It controls a light to counteract for shorter winter days, warms their water when it’s cold, has a fan for cooling and ventilation on hot days, and a camera to keep any eye on them.

At its heart is an ATmega328 controlling the coop functions, and an ESP32 camera board for network connectivity and visual monitoring. An alphanumeric LCD and a set or buttons provide the interface, and all is fitted on a custom PCB in a smart 3D-printed housing. Meanwhile all the files can be found in a GitHub repository.

A machine cannot replace human care and attention when it comes to good animal husbandry, as there’s always an essential need for the poultry owner to attend to the needs of their charges. But a system like this one can make an important contribution to their welfare, with a consequent increase in their laying ability.

Start Your Poultry Brood With This DIY Egg Incubator

March 28, 2016 by 4 Comments

You’d think that hatching chicks from eggs would be easy – after all, birds do it. But it turns out to be a fussy business for humans, and what momma bird does naturally isn’t necessarily easy for us. If your goal is to raise your own brood of peeps, fear not – this DIY egg incubator makes the process much easier.

While [Chris Raynerd]’s incubator was built for quail eggs, pretty much any domestic fowl – chickens, turkeys, ducks, pheasants – will work. The key is temperature control – momma bird’s rump is a natural heat source, and her downy feathers keep the eggs insulated and toasty. That’s a little hard to replicate in a free-air incubator, so [Chris] started with a polystyrene box for insulation. A halogen lamp on a digital thermostat provides most of the heat and keeps the temperature within a degree or two of 37°C. As a backup, a 12 volt halogen bulb on a dimmer keeps the chamber at a minimum of 36°, just in case the main lamp burns out. A small fan and a pan for humidifying water complete the atmospheric controls, although personally we’d arrange the fan to blow across the water to aid evaporation. And a simple grid lets [Chris] turn the eggs regularly, which is another vital service mom provides to her brood.

Sure, it could be Arduino-fied and servo driven, but why bother? This is a simple yet thoughtful build that should see a clutch through to hatching. We’ve seen a few egg incubators before, but even if you’re not interested in raising fowl, the techniques here could easily apply to incubators for biohacking or yogurt making, too.

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