Automation of Silage Feeding and Showering System of a Dairy farm.

The main idea of the project is to provide an automated system of Silage and showering of animals in a dairy farm. In Pakistan a lot of dairy farms are being run manually. The main requirement of the dairy farmer is to provide the animal with appropriate food and a clean healthy environment to reduc

Project Title

Automation of Silage Feeding and Showering System of a Dairy farm.

Project Area of Specialization

Shared Economy

Project Summary

The main idea of the project is to provide an automated system of Silage and showering of animals in a dairy farm. In Pakistan a lot of dairy farms are being run manually. The main requirement of the dairy farmer is to provide the animal with appropriate food and a clean healthy environment to reduce the probability of disease. As the number of animals in a dairy farm increases, management of food (Silage) dispensation to the animals and the cleanliness of each individual animal becomes very difficult. An automatic silage dispensation and animal washing shower system is proposed here, which will not only improve the efficiency of the farm operation it will reduce the losses due to equal dispensation of food and reduction in disease. A prototype system will be setup which provides each animal with good and equal amount of silage in its cell automatically. Each cell has a capacity of a single animal with an automatic door which opens according to the timings of the animal. There will be an RFID tag on the earlobes of each animal which is unique and will be detected after the animal enters the cell and also with the help of a photocell on the top of the door, presence of the animal is detected. If there occurs an error in detecting the animal through RFID tag the photocell will make the system secure. Furthermore, if an animal is not present in the cell the system will notify the manager that there is no animal in the cell through an alarm. The silage will be weighed first and then placed over a conveyor belt; the pusher pushes the silage into the cell if the animal is present in the cell. After a specific time, the second conveyor belt will start moving and will throw the remaining silage into a box. After this, water pumps will start to clean the cell. The Showering Room consists of two doors, one door is for entering and detection of tag of the animal, the second door is for leaving of the animal. Front door will be closed after the detection and then the showers will start automatically and then second door will be opened after specific time of showering is lapsed.

Project Objectives

The main objective of this project is to provide a silage control system for large dairy farms.

Development of herd Management system based on microcontroller and sensors

Display of processes on HMI (Human Machine Interface)

Develop a system to detect the presence of individual animal in a particular area of the farm

Project Implementation Method

First of all, we assemble and built-up all the mechanical design of our project by ourselves without which our idea can't be linked to our project. We selected our PLC as our main controlling unit on the basis of our inputs and outputs of the project thus we selected FATEK PLC of model FBs-60MAR because PLC is useful for mechanical controlling. In the mechanical part, there is a feed storage which will be controlled by a DC motor which will move the barrier from the feed storage and silage will move from feed storage to main conveyer belt, the main conveyer belt will start moving until a specific time according to the number of cells, There are Pushers and cells opposite to each other, the pusher will then open and close once according to the presence of animal in the cell, if there is no animal present in the cell then the pusher will not move, if the presence of animal is detected then the pusher will throw the silage into the lower pusher onto which silage will be weighted through a load cell and animal in the cell can eat the silage, after a specific time, due to the movement of pusher, the remaining silage will be shifted from pusher to the lower conveyer belt, the door of the cell will be opened and a water pump will start which will clean the cell. Animal's presence in the cell will be detected through RFID's and Photocell. RFID's TAG will be applied on the ears of individual animal on which data of each animal is stored. We can also use only RFID's TAG but sometimes TAG's can't be detected due to the movement of the animal so to make our system secure we are using both RFID tags and photocell. We are using an Arduino to communicate Load cell's and RFID tag data to PLC because the module of both load cell and RFID are quite expensive. We are using Mega Arduino because of the number of inputs and outputs. We are designing WEINTEK HMI to display and control our processes according to our project. We are using relays to ON/OFF motors, pushers and conveyer, shower and water pumps according to the logics in our PLC. We add an extra communication port due to availability of only one communication port because we are communicating with both HMI and Arduino Moreover, we are using 5V AND 12V DC supplies according to the working of the components. Showering System will be same as the cells of the silage control system but there will be showers in the cell which will start when the animal will be detected by Photocell or RFID tag.

Benefits of the Project

Beneficial for big dairy farms

Beneficial for international Companies like NESTLE etc.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final deliverable of our project will be an automatic silage control system for dairy farm which will work according to the presence of the animal in the cell. Weighted Silage will be given and remaining will also be weighted. Cleanness of each cell will be fulfilled by water pumps. Cleanness of animal will also be fulfilled by Showering system. Display of all the processes will be fulfilled.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Type of Industry

Agriculture

Technologies

Shared Economy

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com