Sensors help simplify poultry feed inventory management

Level sensors automatically measure feed inventory, simplifying operations for both poultry farmers and feed mills.

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YangYin | iStockPhoto.com
YangYin | iStockPhoto.com

Level sensors automatically measure feed inventory, simplifying operations for both poultry farmers and feed mills.

Before the development of feed inventory management systems, poultry farmers had few options to measure the amount of food in a silo.

“Farmers would climb the bin ladders to look at how much feed was left, which is dangerous, or pounding on the sounds of the bin, which isn’t terribly accurate,” explained Jenny Christensen, Vice President of Marketing, BinMaster/Garner Industries.

Enter sensor technology

New sensor technologies are wireless and simple to use, an improvement over previous methods that needed to be hardwired to a feed bin.

“There have been two major hurdles for farmers. Number one, they don’t have a lot of money to spend. Number two, they don’t want to invest a lot of money in technology that is difficult to understand or run. It’s just a matter of allowing and trusting the technology to help their workplaces be safer and make inventory more efficient,” Christensen said.

“Most of the sensors in the field use laser technology, so there is nothing in the bin that comes in contact with the feed. The technology uses time of flight to measure the distance to the feed. An antenna on the sensor sends the data to a gateway, which converts the information into a software program the farmers can use.”

Information from the software program can also be shared with feed mills who can use this data predict when deliveries for a farm will be needed.

“These systems can help reduce costs. It can minimize late delivery fees when a farm runs out of feed on a Saturday or a Sunday. Farmers can also time their deliveries so that they occur when there is only a low amount of feed in the silo when the animals go to market,” Christensen added.

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