Abstract:
The trend in poultry production has been toward large commercial flocks. With this trend has come an increase in using of mechanization to save time and labour, this includes mechanical cleaning equipment; automatic and semi-automatic feeding and watering equipment’s are common in poultry enterprises. The use of these types of equipment’s makes it possible for large number of birds to be handled in the operation (Gillespie, 2002).
Battery cage system is one of the modern methods used to keep poultry on a large scale. Battery cages are also used for keeping animals such as rabbits, cats, among others. But this study majorly focuses on poultry. Battery cage systems are used to keep birds on a large scale because they are easy to setup, manage and monitor by farmers both in rural and urban areas. Moreover, the author visited some poultry farms and watched the feeding systems, watering systems, manure handling systems.
In this system, the weight sensor/load cell is used to detect increase in the weight of droppings then the system reports over weight to the farmer using a GSM. A GSM modem is used to notify the user about the dropping’s accumulation in the battery cage so that the necessary actions are taken to clean these droppings. This system will reduce the fear that most farmers have to adopt large scale poultry farming and improve the agricultural sector in Uganda as well.
Key words: Android-based, Poultry manure, Bluetooth, Poultry farming, Battery cages, Arduino, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
