Chickens poop. ADVERTISING Chickens poop. About 90 pounds. Per chicken. Per year. Students in a robotics group at Prince Jonah Kalanianaole Elementary and Intermediate School in Papaikou say that’s good motivation. They have been encouraged by robotics criteria to invent
Chickens poop.
About 90 pounds.
Per chicken.
Per year.
Students in a robotics group at Prince Jonah Kalanianaole Elementary and Intermediate School in Papaikou say that’s good motivation.
They have been encouraged by robotics criteria to invent real-world solutions to real-world problems. Their automated chicken coop mock-up, created as a club project to enter in competitions as an automated garden fertilizer, does just that.
“Are you tired of having to clean up your chicken poop every day?” seventh-grader Raney Wilson asked Tuesday while practicing for the After-School Robotics Club’s presentation.
What would you do with pounds and pounds of extra chicken manure?
The students scrunched up their noses — and then they invented the self-moving robotic chicken coop that adds to a compost pile as it goes.
“Because I really love chickens …,” said sixth-grader Pressley Domingo, whose notebook is filled with his unique sketches of chickens.
“This team really went to town with this,” said mentor Andrea Wilson, a special education instructor for sixth- to eighth-grade students. “And they made a lot of additions, too.”
So far, it’s a scale model made mostly of plastic — just big enough for a middle-schooler to carry around and set atop a big hand towel spread along the floor.
The students ask that you imagine the towel represents a backyard compost pile.
Imagine palm fronds, orange peels, coffee grounds and melon rinds, all gloriously rotting away to make new soil that’s rich in organic matter.
If you’re going to have chickens in your backyard (as many families in the Kalanianaole School are do), why not use the eggs and the manure?
First, the students made a scale model.
“It’s a model of a real chicken coop,” said third-grader Molly Nguyen.
Next, the students want to make a real coop for a single chicken, to see if she can live happily while clucking out eggs and manure.
Now, imagine the students’ model chicken coop magically transformed big enough for, say, four happy chickens.
Such a real-world design would be about the size of a shed; 40 square feet (Robotics Club members hypothesize each chicken needs 10 square feet to live comfortably).
“We need lots of funding for that,” Domingo said (donors of cash, supplies or corporate sponsorship can call one of the students’ mentors, Wilson, or fourth-grade teacher Kyra Blue at Prince Jonah at 964-9700).
“I think it would be really cool if they could make even like a one-chicken one,” Wilson said.
Powered by solar energy, the students imagine, the chicken coop will slowly move its way robotically across a compost heap. As it moves, chicken feed, droplets of water shaken from beaks, bedding, down and manure will fall through the coop’s floor and add to the compost.
The family with whom the chickens live will occasionally scoop up a few shovels full of compost from the heap and turn the compost over to mix it.
“Originally, it was kind of a weird idea,” Wilson said. “But it would totally work.”
The family also will refill the feeder Prince Jonah students conveniently included in the design. Water will come from a rainwater collector, except during drought. But the family will add bedding when needed.
And then? The chickens will eat. And drink. And poop — a lot.
And that poop will be spread evenly, over time, across the compost heap, adding the chicken manure’s high proportion of P, N and K (otherwise known as phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium).
The coop will move forward about 1 foot every 24 hours, said sixth-grader Kaiden Ambrosio, who liked the process of putting the model together.
“I like the model part, the actual representation,” said his colleague, sixth-grader Kayla Beiner. “It has a lot of things on it, and it was fun to make.”
There was much trial and error.
For example, a certain adult (who, while in the Chicken Protection Program, will remain nameless), tried to move one of the model’s parts.
“But you can’t turn it because it was glued — and she just ripped it off!” said sixth-grader Peter Nguyen. Thus, students had to figure out ways to make adjustments easier.
But, “we found out there are problems with using chicken poop right away,” Domingo said.
Why?
“Typically, then you’re going to have too high of a nitrogen balance,” Greg Goodale, who works as the chief of a place that really is called the Hawaii County Solid Waste Division, told the Tribune-Herald.
Nitrogen and carbon need to be balanced proportionally, he said.
If nitrogen’s too high, garden leaves will overgrow and even look almost burnt, while crops get stunted.
The students dream of making full-scale, real-world chicken coops to sell for use in small yards, with small compost heaps.
Starting with that single chicken coop.
“I would totally buy one!” the students’ mentor blurted out.
