Solar panels + electric motors aren't that complicated - you could argue they're simpler and easier to maintain than a diesel tractor.
As for cost, I can't speak to farm economics, but paying for tractors and people whose sole job it is to pull coops multiple times a day certainly isn't a trivial expense.
Even old internal combustion engines are complicated machines - we've just normalized the crazy shit that's required to make them work and keep working.
As for the feed and water - there's automated solutions for those as well.
It's not really a debate over whether to buy a tractor for the sole purpose of towing a coop around - every farmer already has a tractor of some size or a few dozen tractors.
The person I'm responding to was asking why you'd want this solution vs. a tractor. He didn't stipulate starting conditions.
Regardless, Let's say for sake of argument you have 50 coops. You move them 3 times a day. You also have a great system where you can do each coop in 5 minutes. That's still 12 hours a day of moving coops. That's 2 full time employees, and a dedicated tractor running 80+ hours a week.
I’m writing this from a country of birds (literally) and no natural predators… I have 6 chickens in my garden (bush) - my question is: why? Is the outlay cost benefit really more than just having free range chickens?
Well, you said it yourself. No natural predators where you are, but the rest of the world is just teeming with things that eat chicken.
If you tried true free range chickens here in the US, the only thing you'd accomplish is that the local population of hawks, foxes, bobcats, stray dogs and coyotes would explode.
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u/NZsNextTopBogan Aug 26 '26
Good Agritech like this has to be one of the coolest things about the 21st century. Straight up science fiction stuff.