Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences 10(2S) 1732-1736 2023

Automatic Food Feeder for Poultry Industry Using Arduino

Shankar Ganesh A1,a), Anandh BA1*,b), Nandakumar P1,c), Deepa R1,d), Sumbramani S2,e)

1
Department of Electronics, PSG College Of Arts & Science, Coimbatore-641014, Tamilnadu, India.
2
Department of Electronics, Government Arts College, kulithalai-639120, Tamilnadu, India.

a)
[email protected], b)[email protected]*, c)[email protected], d)[email protected],
e)
[email protected]

Abstract
Currently, in certain countries chicken poultry is an important industry in proving supportable food sources. To
increase the health of chicken in the hutch many improved and creative methods are created which will increase the
production of chicken meat and chicken eggs. Hence, automating the feeding system is appreciated to improve the
poultry industry. The wastage level of chicken food is reduced when compared to the human feeding system and is
the main advantage of this work. The system design uses Arduino, Ultrasonic Sensor, DC motor, RTC module and
keypad for creating the automated food feeder.

Keywords—Arduino microcontroller, Ultrasonic sensor, DC motor, RTC, Poultry farming.

I. INTRODUCTION
Small and intermediate poultry growers need to meet automation of the poultry industry using software and
the demand within society. As these industries have to
hardware was made and it creates new protocol to con-
meet the bulk need of the market it is necessary to
trol the overall poultry working process. Mainly wire-
produce birds within a short time and without increasing
the time, expenditure and manpower. This work less sensors are
focused on automating the food feeder system, which used in this project. Every value is monitor, stored and
reduces manpower and time. Most of the automated sends the message to the user using GSM [2]. Rupali B.
equipment available in the market for large-scale Mahale used IoT based system to observe real-time data
poultries but it is difficult for small and medium-scale such as moisture, temperature and toxic gases and con-
poultries to incorporate. Large-scale poultries can afford trol them via server.
the existing high-cost automated equipment’s to feed This system uses Arduino Uno on the farm side and
the chickens. Small and intermediate poultries can’t Raspberry Pi board on the server side [3]. The work
include large scale automated system because such
done by M.P. Archana focused on controlling the vari-
types of poultries are run by farmers whose income is
ous types of operations in the poultry farms. The system
very low. The feeder in the small and intermediate
poultries needs frequent refilling of food which takes contains a wireless sensor and mobile system to manage
more labour, time and also increases the expenditure for the work very easily. It observers the farm temperature,
farmers. An automated feeder is necessary to reduce the light intensity, ammonia gas and controlled automatical-
expenditure and to efficiently feed the foodstuff to ly [4]. PLC based system is used by V. Kowsalyaa to
chickens by small and intermediate poultries. The use of measure the weight of the chicken and focused to kill
the proposed system is useful to feed the food in a the various germs in the poultry farm. It also uses con-
container at appropriate timings whenever it’s needed. veyor control to move the objects from one place to
another place [5]. The author ShubhamMitkari used IoT
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
and Bluetooth based mobile application system which
The system focused by the author S. Aravind is on
performs food feeding, sprinkling water and fork for
controlling the various types of operations in the poultry
soil mixture to reduce gases [6]. V.Ayyappan shows
farms. It monitors the temperature, food level and water
the poultry automation by controlling temperature, hu-
level and controls them automatically [1]. K. Sinduja’s
midity, gas, water level using a PIC microcontroller and
intensive is the full
it does not have the food feeder [7]. B.Navaneeth fo-

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cused on designing an automatic feeding system for the Zainal consists of Arduino to control the food flow to
poultry farms having the birds 10000 to 50000. The food containers and a temperature sensor to maintain the
system used a load cell and feeder channel in automat- goodness of the chicken food [20]. Table 1 presents a
ing the system [8]. survey from the existing poultry farm.

TABLE I
FPGA Spartan6 based system was used by S.S
A SURVEY FROM THE EXISTING POULTRY FARM
Ramgirwar and used few sensors to monitor the farm
Item Shed-1 Shed-2 Shed-3
parameters like heat, moisture, water, percentage of
ammonia and these data are stored on a web page. This Age of Chickens 0-9th days 10-29th days 30-50th days
system is an integrated solution for the poultry industry Small 120 Medium 400 Large 400
Size of the shed
[9]. IoT based project is used to by Hitimana observe Sq. Ft Sq. Ft Sq. Ft
and control various factors remotely in poultry farm Number of Chickens 80-100 80-100 80-100
in the shed chicks chicks chicks
which are messaged to the owner and data’s obtained
Food Quantity per 40-50
are stored in the cloud [10]. Bilal Ghazal used a wireless 80-90 g/day 80-90 g/day
chicken g/day
sensor to measure the various poultry farm parameters Morning Morning Morning
like the intensity of light, moisture, temperature, and air 6AM 6AM 6AM
Feed Timing
quality. The data’s collected are sent to the controller Evening Evening Evening
5PM 5PM 5PM
unit through a ZigBee transceiver [11]. SiwakornJin-
darat and PongpisittWuttidittachotti employed embed- III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
ded systems and smartphone to develop an intelligent Most of the implemented system focuses on
system to monitor and control the chicken farming pa- environmental conditions and few have involved in the
rameters [12]. The author O.T. Arulogun designed a feeding system. Many small and average poultry
poultry feed providing system using a PIC microcon- industries are run by economically weaker peoples. The
troller and a mobile intelligent system to move the feed- area involved in the poultry farm also small. The main
er all over [13]. An automatic pet feeder controlled by problem is the food wastage and it has to be reduced.
phone app was developed by Ravi Babu. The system The proposed system concentrates on automating the
dispenses the required food on time. The required in- food feeding system which highly reduces the food
wastage. Figure Irepresentthe components for design
formation in handling the pet’s food container is sent to
and Automatic Food Feeder for Poultry and Figure II
the dispenser from the phone app [14]. Geetanjali A. shows the circuit diagram for the planned system.
Choukidar controlled the poultry farm environmental
parameters by using wireless sensors and GPRS net-
work. The data’s obtained from the sensors are sent to
the webpage through GPRS and are stored in the server
[15].

Muhammad Ammad-uddin proposed a system with a

wearable wireless sensor node to analyze the humidity,
temperature, light, air composition and airspeed which
helps in identifying infected chickens and improve
productivity [16]. The author Hua Li designed an online
henhouse observing system which was created on
wireless sensor network technology and computer
network technology. Data fitting methods and software
are used for data loss recovery and self-decision making
[17]. Mobile system and wireless sensors were used by
the Author K.SravanthGoud to remotely monitor and
control the poultry environmental condition [18].
Olaniyi used a fuzzy logic system in providing water Fig I .Components for design and automatic food
and food to the birds in the poultry farm with stated feeder for poultry.
time durations [19]. The feeding machine proposed by

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Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences 10(2S) 1732-1736 2023

writing process. LCD is used to show the Time, Date

and Food level in this process
E. DC Motor:
The motor is connected to the centre of the container.
The DC motor is used to open the food container valve.
Based on the time set by the RTC module The Valve
will be open (Shaft rotate in clockwise Direction): the
food is fed to the chicks. Ones the time set by the RTC
module is over, the shaft rotates back and closes the
valve opening which stops the food supply.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The working flow of the systems is represented as
flowchart in figure III. When the system is turned ON,
Fig II. Circuit diagram of the system
the time for opening and closing of the food valve are
A. Arduino Mega and Arduino IDE: set using the RTC module and is shown in the LCD
Arduino is an open source, simple hardware and display. When the time is 6AM in the morning and 5PM
software that can be used easily. ATmega2560 in the evening the DC motors are turned on which
microcontroller is used in Arduino mega board. It has rotates the shaft of the food feeder and the food is filled
54 I/O pins in which 15 pins will provide PWM output. in the container and the motor is turned off when the
It also has 4 UARTs, 16 analog pins, and a 16MHZ container is filled.The intermediate time between the
crystal oscillator. All these can be controlled by a set of opening and closing of the valve is determined by the
instructions programmed through the Arduino IDE size of the boxes kept below. Here three different sizes
software. Arduino IDE supports C and C++ of boxes are being used based on the age of the chicks.
programming languages. The ultrasonic sensor is connected to the top of the food
B. RTC module: container and is mainly used to measure the level of the
DS3231 RTC module is a very accurate I2C real time food in the container. The status of the food container is
clock which can count seconds, minutes, hours, month displayed on the LCD. If the container is empty the
and years. buzzer sound is produced continuously. Figure IV
The main advantages are temperature compensated, represents a photograph of the design and
high accuracy and low cost. It also has an automatic implementation of the embedded development board.
power failure battery switch circuitry. It provides exact
Time and date to the system from which feeding time is
automated.
C. Ultrasonic sensor:
HC-SR04 is a sensor used to measure the object level
using Ultrasonic sound waves. This sensor has a control
unit, transmitter and receiver. This sensor provides non-
contact range finding with good accuracy and firm
readings from 2 cm to 400 cm in an easy to use pack. It
transmits 40KHZ pulses and checks for the reflected
pulse from the obstacle. In this system, it is connected to
the food container located at the top. This sensor is used
to refill the container by knowing the quantity of food in
the container.
D. LCD Display:
The LCD is used to displays the output from the
system. It consumes less power than LED because it
works on the principle blocking light rather than
emitting it. The RS pin controls the LCD’s memory and
holds on the screen. Read or Write mode is selected Fig III. Working flowchart for design characterization
using the R/W pin. Enable pin allows the reading and of automatic food feeder for poultry

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 Automatic Food Feeder for Poultry Industry Using Arduino

[4] M.P. Archana, S.K. Uma and T. Raghavendra

Babu, “Monitoring and Controlling Of Poultry
Farm Using IOT,” International Journal of Inno-
vative Research in Computer and Communication
Engineering,vol. 6, no. 4,pp. 3573-3579, Apr.
2018.

[5] V. Kowsalyaa, P. Manishab, S. SelvaKumarc, G.

Priyankad and R. MadhanRaje, “Automation of
Poultry Farm Using PLC,” International Journal
of Advanced Science and Engineering Research,
vol. 4, no. 1,pp. 113-119, Apr. 2019

[6] S. Mitkari, A. Pingle, Y. Sonawane, S. Walunj,

and A. Shirsath, “IOT Based Smart Poultry
Fig IV. Photograph of design and implementation of Farm,” International Research Journal of Engi-
embedded development board. neering and Technology, vol. 6, no. 3,pp. 2380-
2384, Mar. 2019.
V. CONCLUSION
[7] V. Ayyappan, T. Deepika, S. DivyaDharshini, M.
Small scale and medium scale poultry farming are
Elayaraja and R. Shanmugasundaram, “IOT Based
commonly adapted by many of the Indian poultry Smart Poultry Farm,” South Asian Journal of En-
farmers. The participation of the labours and time for gineering and Technology, vol. 3, no. 2,pp. 77-84,
these poultry farms is reduced for farmers by Mar. 2017.
implementing this automatic feeding system. This
project helps to solve the food wastage, labour and time [8] B. Navaneeth and A.K. Murty, “Automatic Poul-
required for the poultry farmers. It can be concluded try Feeder,” International Journal of Advance En-
from the project that there is a possible chance for an gineering and Research Development, vol. 2, no.
automatic system to feeding the birds in small and 7,pp. 338-343, Jul. 2015.
medium scale poultries and this process is easy to
handle, low cost and user friendly. [9] S.S. Ramgirwar and N.A. Dawande, “FPGA
Based Smart Poultry Farm Management System,”
Conflict of Interest: International Journal of Advance Research In Sci-
Authors do not have any conflict of interest. ence And Engineering, vol.7, no. 5, pp. 265-27,
Mar. 2018.
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