Design and simulation of an automated poultry feeder.

Abstract

The agricultural Sector in Uganda has been proven to be crucial to sustain the ever growing population or the country. However, the traditional methods of practicing agriculture can no longer cope with the ever increasing demand of food in the country hence mechanization becomes the best way to increase production and reduce limitations to optimal performance of the sector Poultry farming is one of the greatest contributing activities in the agricultural sectors having mostly labour and monitoring requirements as the major challenges in management which hinders timely production and leads to a drop in yield. The building of this project therefore focused on the design and simulation of an automated poultry feeder to refill the feeding troughs whenever feed is consumed by the birds, without human supervision. The feeder is designed operate on entirely mechanical means without any use of electricity so it can be afforded by even people in rural areas without electricity. It is to be different and better than the existing feeders and to achieve this data is gathered through extensive discussions and consultations with farmers and other resourceful individuals in the field. Also technical consultations and discussions with my supervisors are a key in this project development. The feeder is designed to use basic easy to get materials like wood hence its selling price on the market wouldn't be a lot which enable all classes of fanners to afford it. The construction the feeder could not be done because of the several precisions built components of the feeder like in the gate mechanism which require custom built parts that are difficult and expensive to manufacture. By the end of this project a detailed design of an affordable automated poultry feeder is presented and simulated. With detailed description in dimensions, material selection, operating parameters and pictorial representations of the design.