Two Year 12 Certificate II Engineering students, Lachlan Mahoney and Samuel O’Donnell, have recently assembled the Agricultural Department’s new Mobile Chook Pen as part of their Engineering studies.

This was completed over a few weeks and was extra work above their normal classes as their training is condensed into a shorter time frame. They were mostly supervised by Mr Spiller (Groundsman) and then by Mr Stone (Engineering Teacher) to ensure quality assurance. The Mobile Chook Pen is now located at the school’s agricultural plot in Applethorpe.

Our 30 Hy-Line Brown chickens will have arrived by the time you are reading this. We hope to have our egg production up and running straight away.

The solar panel powered electronics and computer opens and closes the door, removes hens from the eggs they have laid and tilts the eggs away from the laying box to the collection area. The computer and electronics have more options that can be added to it in the future.

As you can see in the photo of the Mobile Chook Pen, our main livestock fence has also gone in. Once our water infrastructure is completed, sheep will also be sourced for our agricultural plot. We have had two of our tanks installed, so our irrigation system is underway.

Watch this space for the next instalment !