Any CS and A&M engineers out there that can design a solar powered animal water trough on wheels that will traverse 1 acre of land in a zigzag pattern from one end to the other twice in a 16 hour period?
Maximum carrying capacity: 1000 kg
Discussion
wow! what a great idea!
Have you seen this project based in Missouri near Kansas City?
https://www.opensourceecology.org/
Would you be open to open sourcing your design?
Yes!
I have seen this. It was around 2014 I think. Thank you for reminding me of this.
Shit, this was gold back then.
Except for that pesky ‘refilling’ issue.
I can’t wrap my mind around having a hose connected to this thing with a float valve and not have the hose trampled af inside of a day.
Ppl laugh in my face when I say there's hella shit to invent for agriculture still.
Why are you constraining the solution to solar
Curious as to why it has to move. Do your livestock have No legs?
Livestock concentrate around stock tanks concentrating impact in that area compacting it. They also overgraze the grasses close to it.
If the stock tank moves around then so will the animals and they won’t overgraze around the tank and compaction will turn into widespread disturbance which causes new grass to grow.
It also would distribute urine and feces instead of concentrating it in one area.
Clever✅ now I think about it the area around our creek and dams where the livestock drank got really mucky in winter too.
I like to think I get most of what you're trying to achieve by putting the shelter/water in the best fixed location in each paddock for my sheep. Typically it's a spot high on the landscape. I'm moving my sheep every few days so there is rarely a detrimental impact where the shelter and water are. However, I've only got 20-60 sheep moving around. It would be nice to have a robot water tank that could move with the flock and go full itself though; maybe mine some Bitcoin when the sun is shining good too.
What if I had 361 one acre paddocks in planned rotational grazing?
This is all purely theoretical of course and I’m mostly thinking out loud.
Automated infrastructure would be cool af.