Abstract

This work is aimed at applying holonic control system to poultry house travelling hopper feeders with the comparative cost analysis. It adopts HCBA which is suitable for controlling the reconfigurable automated processes. The feeder consists of parts for different types of poultry feeds dispensable from the feed reservoirs and carried around by travelling hoppers along the feed carts. The simulations were carried out using MATLAB and SIMATIC software. The responses of the speed of each traveling hopper were determined to be 1.04 sec, 1.91 sec and 0.0841% for rise time, settling time and percentage overshoot respectively. The parameters of the embedded controller in STEP 7 CONT_C FB41 data block translate to a constant gain of 10, integral time constant of 100 ms and derivative time constant of 280 ms. Visual results from the HMI show the system’s ability for customization, cooperation and autonomy for implementation of any poultry feeding program. The cost analysis shows that it is profitable for farm capacity of 10,000 birds and above with low labour cost and average annual energy cost of about N708,000. The feed wastage loss is reduced by 66% while depreciation is 10% as compared to cage system with belted conveyor feeder.

Authors and Affiliations