“Alexa, open the chicken coop”: fresh eggs within reach of the app

Fresh zero-kilometer eggs with urban chicken coops. In Italy it is allowed to keep up to 10 hens, without the need for permits but only with regular complaint as for any pet. Those who raise them consider them “pets with benefits”: the pleasure and care of a pet that in exchange provides us with the daily egg. The commitment they require, assures those who have them, is not excessive, and there are now many smart gadgets on the market to make the life of the citizen chicken farmer as easy as using an app. Waking up with the hens is useless: no high heels to open the door of the hen house where they find shelter at night. Just install a smart door operated with a timer connected to the dedicated app via Wi-Fi. The setup allows you to control the opening and closing times, adjusting it according to the season or the presence of light, and in some models it is compatible with the demotic assistants of Amazon and Google. Just say “Alexa, open the door to the chicken coop” to save yourself the exit to the garden at dawn, or to remotely close the entrance once the chickens have returned for the night (apparently they do it independently when of the sun), without fear of crushing them thanks to a sensor that blocks the door if one of the birds is halfway. But there’s more: if we fear the intrusion of cats or foxes, there are doors capable of detecting the approach of a predator and blocking access. Dedicated apps allow you to monitor the levels of food in the manger and water in drinking troughs, by installing remotely controllable distributors, together with night vision cameras. In this way, even days of absence of the owner can be covered, such as weekends and short holidays, without the need to find someone to take care of the chickens. To optimize the production of eggs, then, it must be borne in mind that a laying hen needs about 14 hours of light to lay. The reason is biological: it is useless to give birth to chicks during the winter. To get around this problem, additional hours of light can be guaranteed inside the chicken coop, also making sure that the temperature does not drop below 11 degrees. All objectives that can be achieved with a remotely controllable lighting and heating system, perhaps even here with the help of an app that adjusts the times according to the season, and sensors and thermostats capable of detecting atmospheric and climatic conditions to adjust the shooting when needed. To protect itself from blackouts or to have energy self-sufficiency, the chicken coop can be equipped with solar panels that will provide all smart devices with the electricity necessary to work even in the absence of connection to the grid. tracking such as Flockstar or Eggspense, which allow you to store the data of each hen, the number of eggs laid, and also the relationship between expenses and eggs produced (in a nutshell: how much does it cost to bring an egg from our hens to the table). And for the smartest, RFID technology (low frequency transmitters such as those used in stores for inventories and as anti-shoplifting) also comes to the aid. It is enough to associate a sensor to each hen through a band on the paw to ensure that each bird has its own identity card, and thus check who enters and leaves the hen house, also check remotely if all of them have returned for the night shelter, and also check where and how the eggs are laid, associating the sensors to the individual nests.