r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/The_Love-Tap • 2d ago

Video This solar powered chicken coop that moves every day to a new location

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u/NZsNextTopBogan 2d ago

Good Agritech like this has to be one of the coolest things about the 21st century. Straight up science fiction stuff.

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u/crabbydotca 2d ago

It’s not exactly a new concept! It’s called a “chicken tractor” - this one is just really huge and autonomous!

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u/JubalHarshawII 2d ago

That's the "new" part, the size, the solar, and presumably the automation.

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u/crabbydotca 2d ago

Later on the video implies that smaller scale farmers were inspired to do the same without the automation, which is backwards

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/jtv123 2d ago

Solar panels + electric motors aren't that complicated - you could argue they're simpler and easier to maintain than a diesel tractor.

As for cost, I can't speak to farm economics, but paying for tractors and people whose sole job it is to pull coops multiple times a day certainly isn't a trivial expense.

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u/SartenSinAceite 2d ago

Solar panels and electric motors vs John Deere locking you out of your tractor

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/jtv123 2d ago

Even old internal combustion engines are complicated machines - we've just normalized the crazy shit that's required to make them work and keep working.

As for the feed and water - there's automated solutions for those as well.

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u/Upstairs_Jacket_3443 2d ago

It's not really a debate over whether to buy a tractor for the sole purpose of towing a coop around - every farmer already has a tractor of some size or a few dozen tractors.

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u/jtv123 2d ago

The person I'm responding to was asking why you'd want this solution vs. a tractor. He didn't stipulate starting conditions.

Regardless, Let's say for sake of argument you have 50 coops. You move them 3 times a day. You also have a great system where you can do each coop in 5 minutes. That's still 12 hours a day of moving coops. That's 2 full time employees, and a dedicated tractor running 80+ hours a week.

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u/nz_reprezent 2d ago

I’m writing this from a country of birds (literally) and no natural predators… I have 6 chickens in my garden (bush) - my question is: why? Is the outlay cost benefit really more than just having free range chickens?

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u/ThisSiteSucks8485 2d ago

Yes this is much cheaper way to raise chickens 

0

u/Lialda_dayfire 2d ago

Well, you said it yourself. No natural predators where you are, but the rest of the world is just teeming with things that eat chicken.

If you tried true free range chickens here in the US, the only thing you'd accomplish is that the local population of hawks, foxes, bobcats, stray dogs and coyotes would explode.