As you might know, I always have a whole load of projects on the go. Today I wanna tell you about the automated low-cost nest boxes for egg-mobiles that I’m working on with my friend Bruno from Green Tools TECH. I’m funding the rapid prototyping, design and manufacture of them in the hopes that we can come up with something that works and can be shipped all over Europe to pastured poultry farmers.
If you know a thing or two about design and/or pastured layers, we’d love to hear your feedback.
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Best,
Richard
how do you want your design improvements submitted? We will have some. I have my design friend already working on it.
thanks
Greg Parrish
United States 256-651-2429
To answer your question what would you pay for automated nest box I would phrase it this way. How much time does the activity to remove the egg take without automation. And how much time is saved using automation. The difference will be the time saved. Add a labor cost to that per unit and then project the labor cost savings. Apply the labor cost savings to the length of time it will take to recuperate the cost of the egg Mobile. Then you will know approximately how much the eggMobile will cost and how much more efficiently you will gain by paying the extra price.
Maybe this small amount of human contact with the hens is a good thing, and too much complexity and automation is a bad thing?
Complex machinery requires maintenance, spare parts and repairs over time, whereby keeping things low tech and simple is the future surely?
Is manual egg collecting so much work you’re resorting to high tech, and trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?
The layers need checking up on regularly, anyway.
Anyone ?
Great project Richard, keep it up. I agree mechanising is a great step forward as long as you can keep the complexity very low. I’m curious to see how this develops. We will be building a few of your egg mobiles soon in the Indus Valley!!! Would love to see the new designs in time for when we begin our build in late Jan/early Feb. The mobiles will be traversing in between tree rows of a syntropic polyculture of citrus, a first in our region!
Keep up the fantastic work!