Poultry harvester
AssigneeAmerican Calan, Inc.
InventorsDouglas V. Briggs, George C. Stevens
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A poultry harvester capable of capturing poultry on a generally horizontal plane, such as the floor of a poultry house, and transferring a predetermined number of captured poultry to a compartment of a cage having a plurality of compartments. A capturing mechanism captures the poultry and provides it to a conveying mechanism for conveying the captured poultry. A counting mechanism counts the captured poultry. A depositing mechanism deposits the conveyed poultry into each of the compartments of the cage under the control of a CPU responsive to the counting mechanism. The CPU controls the depositing mechanism to deposit in each of the compartments the predetermined number of poultry as counted by the counting mechanism. A method for harvesting poultry is also disclosed.
Claims22
A poultry harvester for capturing poultry on a generally horizontal plane, such as the floor of a poultry house, and transferring a predetermined number of captured poultry to a compartment of a cage having a plurality of compartments, the poultry harvester comprising:
- means for capturing the poultry;
- means for counting the captured poultry;
- means for conveying the captured poultry;
- means for depositing the conveyed poultry into each of the compartments of the cage;
- means for providing relative movement between the depositing means and the cage;
- and
- means, responsive to the counting means, for controlling said depositing means and said movement providing means to deposit the predetermined number of poultry as counted by said counting means in each of the compartments of the cage.
A method for harvesting poultry from a generally horizontal plane, such as the floor of a poultry house, and transferring a predetermined number of captured poultry to a compartment of a cage having a plurality of compartments arranged in rows and columns, said method comprising the steps of:
- capturing the poultry;
- counting the captured poultry;
- conveying the captured poultry to a depositing mechanism;
- and
- depositing by the depositing mechanism the predetermined number of conveyed poultry as counted by said counting step into each of the compartments in each row and in each column of the cage by relative movement between the depositing mechanism and the cage to deposit poultry into said plurality of compartments.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.