ATHENS, Ga. — The winner of the University of Georgia’s 2022 FABricate Entrepreneurial Initiative competition is a novel automated system designed to help pasture-raised egg producers increase their efficiency.
Conceptualized by a team led by poultry science undergraduate student Chris Ayers and biological engineering student Jeffery Whitmire, Chiktopia is an automated chicken tractor designed to move pasture-raised chickens easily and efficiently while preserving the land and saving labor costs.
A chicken tractor is an alternative form of poultry housing used by free-range and pasture-raised poultry producers to house and transport chickens around their pastures. Current chicken. . .