laziness

Chicken Feeder and Precrastination

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ Leave a comment

In some of my previous posts (Chicken Coop Automation 1 and Chicken Coop Automation Part 2 ), I mentioned preemptive laziness and how it relates to my chicken habit. After reading those posts, my wife coined a new word: precrastination. I liked the term, and I defined it to mean doing a task ahead of time to allow more free time in the future. It turns out precrastination is a real psychological term, and its real definition is performing a task before it is beneficial or optimal to do so. I just can’t win. I guess I need to procrastinate my precrastination to reach an optimal state of crastination.

Regardless, I think I crastinated this chicken feeder just right. The idea actually came from the internet of googles, but it works very well so I thought I’d pass it on.

Originally I had a traditional chicken feeder that fed the ground better than it fed the chickens. I would fill it up with a couple pounds of feed, and most of it would end up on the ground the next day. This didn’t align with my laissez faire chicken policy.

Some research provided some exotic and elaborate feeding systems that had been created: from electronic rationing systems to screw drive feeders with an auger. While I am a firm believer in over engineering and Rube Goldberg devices, I didn’t want to deal with the calibration, sensors, programming, and expense for this particular project. I did some more research and discovered that I could make a very simple feeder with some advanced engineering materials: hot glue, a bucket, and some PVC… pretty much all of the good stuff minus duct tape and zip ties.

The feeder is pretty basic and shouldn’t require much explanation.

  • Get bucket.
  • Get PVC elbow
  • Get hot glue gun
  • Cut hole in bucket
  • Trim one end of PVC elbow
  • Hot glue PVC elbow in hole

Right now, I have one of these made from a square bucket and two made from round buckets. Rather than putting feed in a couple pounds at a time and having it trampled into the ground, I fill up all three about once a month with 50# of pellet feed and have virtually no waste.

The only variable I’ve played with is the height of the internal mouth of the PVC above the floor of the bucket:

  • 1/2″: too low, and the feed does not feed very well
  • 1″: the feed feeds fairly freely
  • 1 1/2″: (.125 feet) feed feeds forth flawlessly forming a fully functional first-rate fowl feeder

I would also like to note the importance of using feed pellets rather than crumbles. Crumbles muck up the whole works.

The neat thing about this project is that more time is spent driving to the store and buying the components than actually building the feeder!

It’s Hard Work Being Lazy or Chicken Coop Automation Part 1: Door Hardware

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 2 Comments

That title might be a little deceptive. Let me elaborate. I will work hard on something now anticipating it will allow for laziness in the future. “Laziness in the future” allows time to work hard on something else in the future, so I can be lazy about that in the more distant future… which allows me to be even more lazy about even more things in the even more distant future. I guess I am just doing my best to maximize my laziness.

All of that leads into an update on my first post. It was about a chicken coop and my reluctance to got out and open it every morning and close it every night. It has been in operation for years now, I’ve automated another, and I want to provide an update. Maybe it will help someone else to maximize their laziness.

 

BACKGROUND

My original coop is a semi-portable “chicken tractor” designed to be moved about the yard on wheels. In theory, I could periodically move the tractor and fertilize different sections of the yard. In practice, it obliterated all plant life anywhere near its presence. While it failed as a fertilizer, it succeeded that much more in my maximization of laziness! I no longer need to move it about the yard.

I bought the chicken tractor on Craigslist, so the coop door (visible here and here) was a 12″ X 12″ piece of plastic that slides horizontally to open and close.

My second coop was built around laziness with a door that opens and closes by sliding vertically. It also has features allowing it to be cleaned in a few minutes, supplying weeks of food and water, and can be shut in if it is cold. However, my FAVORITE feature is the slick ramp out of the door. If I “accidentally” increase the slope by removing the bricks at the bottom, the chickens can’t get enough traction and fall right down it.

Door Automation Hardware:

I am not going to provide details on the watering and feeding system in this post. I decided not to actively control those because mechanical systems were too simple and reliable. I am also not going to go into details due to space, boredom of the reader, and my laziness. Feel free to comment with questions and I will elaborate.

The chicken tractor door was not designed with electric controls in mind, so it required some jackassery. Its motive force is supplied by an electric screwdriver. I removed the guts and wired it directly to a relay that is controlled via an Arduino microcontroller. It has an angle attachment from a drill that rotates the drive axis by 90 degrees. It also has micro switches to detect when the movement of the door has reached its limits.

The chicken coop door uses a universal power antenna mechanism for the automotive industry but controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. Using an antenna was not my idea, there are multiple examples on the internet so I don’t know who to give credit.

The power antenna took some adaptation due to the door’s weight. When winter brought colder temperatures, an internal clutch mechanism would slip rather than lifting the door. I disassembled the antenna and found I could modify the clutch mechanism to increase its torque output. Things were great until summer brought warmth and the modified clutch transferred too much torque, stripping the internal gears.

Rather than continually adjusting the clutch mechanism based on the weather forecast (minimizing laziness), I opted to make a counterweight (maximizing laziness). It consisted of a couple clothesline pulleys, an Oxford comma, some string, and couple pieces of 2×4. Notice their odd shape. I cut off pieces off to balance their weight with the door (with the drive mechanism unattached).

After putting all of the work into these coops, I began to wonder if it was worth it. Do the chickens even need a door that closes at night? If they’ve been around for thousand and thousands of years, shouldn’t they be able to fend for themselves? The answer is no, they are unable to fend for themselves. One night there was a glitch and the door didn’t close. When I went out to check on them, I found a headless chicken laying on the floor. I have since remedied the glitch, and the offender has been dispatched to a better (maybe worse) place.

This has gotten longer than intended, so I have provided some information on the control algorithm in this link.

Overall, both of the coop’s door mechanisms have afforded me the opportunity to be quite lazy indeed! So lazy that I can’t even bring myself to finish this senten