Document Type

Report

Publication Date

4-2020

Disciplines

Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering | Industrial Technology

Course Number and Title

TSM 416: Technology Capstone

Department

Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering

Major

Agricultural Systems Technology (Sweeney, Ryan,Thompson); Industrial Technology (Sinclair)

Instructors

Michael Anderson and Jacek Koziel

Problem Statement

The Iowa State Beef Nutrition Farm’s mission is to provide facilities and support for research aimed at optimizing nutrition and management of beef cattle in Iowa. Facilities include a modern open-front, 60-pen feedlot, a 7-pen feedlot with an electronic feed intake management system, and a 16-pen open-front feedlot. All pen sizes are adequate for up to six animals. There are 120 acres of improved pasture available for grazing research and several small open lots with fence line feed bunks. A modern, indoor animal handling facility, feed mill and indoor and outdoor feed storage structures are on hand.

Our client, Jordan Harding, has tasked us with the goal of increasing efficiency and decreasing time spent feeding cattle daily. Currently, they are using multiple people to feed, and when the feed wagon is out feeding there is wasted downtime for the other workers. This downtime will be filled with our dumper in place. We hope to cut their daily feeding time down from 3 hours to 2 hours.

Our solution is to fill their downtime waiting on the feed wagon with a fillable hopper that can then dump into the feed wagon. Using the time that the feed wagon is actually feeding to mix the next ration will save them tremendous overall time and increase their efficiency drastically.

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