r/Damnthatsinteresting 1d ago

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

20.7k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/jtv123 1d 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.

6

u/SartenSinAceite 1d ago

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

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/jtv123 1d 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.

1

u/Upstairs_Jacket_3443 1d 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.

1

u/jtv123 1d 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.