Cold-weather Activated Cylinder and Feeder

Abstract

This invention describes a feeder where the accessibility automatically changes as the temperature changes. If a continuous supply of food cannot be made available to animals, the next best solution is to provide supplemental feed during cold conditions when animals must either consume more calories or eat richer food to help boost their metabolism to stay warm. To meet these needs, a cold-weather activated feeder has been designed and described in this document. The feeder can be created using either a cold-weather activation cylinder or a bimetallic coil. The cold-weather activation cylinder is a cylinder that extents and contracts as water freezes, taking advantage of the fact that water expands by approximately 9% as it freezes. The bimetallic coil approach uses a coil that expands and contracts whereby opening and closing the feeder. A feeder of this design would also be very beneficial for feeding animals in remote locations or for people taking vacations in the winter. At the same time, this feeder would encourage the animals to find natural food on warm days, when it is more readily abundant. In addition to automatically changing the accessibility, the feeder could display a message indicating whether it was opened or closed, whereby allowing someone to see from a distance the status of the feeder.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.