Means of automatic drinking for poultry: proposed structural and technological solution for multifunctional group automatic drinking bowl system

There has been given a brief analysis of the technological requirements for the process of automatic drinking in the context of the structural composition of poultry. Particular attention is paid to the process of automatic drinking of ducks. The structure of technological operations and the features of poultry’s interaction with the means of automatic drinking are briefly considered. The constructive solutions of automatic drinking means are analyzed in terms of patents, as well as developments recommended for production, produced by the industry and operated at poultry enterprises. Their advantages and disadvantages are substantiated. There have been given foreign and national patents with the disclosure of their shortcomings both in the technological aspect and constructive solutions. The results of the data analysis from staged studies considering the process of receiving water by poultry (in particular, chickens, turkeys, ducks) from the means of automatic drinking and research of known technical and technological solutions for means of automatic drinking of poultry have led to the development of a scheme for classifying means of automatic drinking of poultry. A brief explanation of the classification scheme is given. To reveal the features of the technological process of automatic drinking (water intake by ducks), the article presents preliminary research results: on a single cycle of water intake by ducks from an automatic drinking bowl, duration of contact between the poultry and the automatic drinking bowl (constancy of the cycle; interruption with subsequent repetition of water intake); according to the interaction of the poultry with the body of the drinking bowl by its basic elements; by the multiplicity of automatic drinking cycles (multiple; with signs of randomness of the operation by the number of times; by the priority of water intake relative to another subject; depending on the poultry acquisition factor; by the quantitative, age, and sex structure on of the serviced livestock). There has been proposed a new technical and technological solution for a group automatic drinking bowl (with priority for ducks) based on our experiments and the identified shortcomings in the technological and design solutions of the known means of automatic drinking of poultry. The presented materials have allowed us formulate some conclusions.