Henrietta from Australia has a Strava account , and the number of steps she takes every day may make you feel like you need to get out more . Did I bring up that Henrietta is a chicken ? Henrietta the ‘ chook ’ live on a farm have by Australian companyHonest Eggs Co. , and she ’s one of the first wimp to test out FitChix , a chicken activity tracker .
FitChix Chicken-Friendly Activity Tracker
cover thehealth of livestockis an authoritative part of farming . Animals do n’t always react to pain in the ass , malady or stress the same way humans do . Because they ca n’t severalize us when they are feeling fed up , hungry , cold or threadbare , it can be a conflict to determine what unwellness a flock has or whether they ’re getting enough food and use .
monitor the well - being of Gallus gallus is just one of the intellect why Honest Eggs Co. invented the first fitness tracker for poulet .
Honest Eggs Co. wanted to fascinate and share the activity horizontal surface of their birds with the people who purchase their eggs . They did this to eliminate any questions about how devoid - range their egg are . By tracking their chickens and stamping the activity degree of their hens powerful on the egg , anyone buying the egg would recognise they really were from truefree - range biddy .
How FitChix Works
If you wear upon an bodily process tracker yourself , you bed how it tracks your daily steps , space and other metrics like calories burned , GPS or meat pace . Just like our own physical fitness trackers , FitChix likely practice an accelerometer to supervise steps .
Accelerometers are sensor that discover movement . As the chicken goes about its solar day , the gadget tracks bodily process and log it in software . As read in Henrietta ’s Strava account , the equipment also seem to cross distance and durations .
Honest Egg Co. takes their chicken ’s step enumeration and prints it justly on the egg . If you bribe ballock from them , you’re able to open your egg cartonful in the morning and be greeted with a bit that show you how many steps the chickens took before pose the ball .
The only catch ? The company does n’t track individual hen data and print it severally on each egg . Instead , Honest Eggs Co. prints an norm of their corporate hen ’ steps on each dozen .
FitChix is n’t an intrusive gimmick , so there is no harm for the chickens . It ’s a small fitness tracker that sits on the hen ’s back . Honest Egg Co. has said they do n’t require their wimp to wear the tracker all the time but instead use it occasionally to supervise activity .
More Chicken Trackers Could Be on the Way
FitChix is n’t a machine usable for leverage for your own flock , but there is another chicken fitness tracker in development that we may see in the future tense . research worker at the University of California in Riverside have been working on a ‘ Fitbit for chickens ’ since 2018 .
The gimmick is a small backpack the chicken wears , and the research worker use an algorithm that analyzes different chicken behaviour . When a chicken wears the backpack , researchers can see whether she is pick up or dust - bathing , or if she is feel under the weather . implausibly , the algorithm can also countenance them know if the chicken is sustain from illnesses likeparasites .
Coming Soon to a Farm Near You?
There are GPS dog trackers , thoughtfulness collars to monitor cows , and even trackers to see where your barn guy wanders during the day . Are poulet trackers the next big tendency for poultry owners ?
meter will say . But if they do appear on the marketplace , we ’ll all be able to gain worthful insight into the lives of our wimp .
