DIY Solar Poultry: Building an Automated 12V Chicken Feeder

Author: Marcial Rey (In Between Bamboos Farm)

If you recently followed my guide on off-grid solar incubators, you know the next logical challenge: feeding the chicks once they hatch and grow. Daily feeding ties you to the coop, making it difficult to step away from the farm. To solve this, I designed a fully automated, off-grid chicken feeder that dispenses food on a precise schedule without adding a single peso to the electric bill.

Here is a look at the hardware and logic behind building a DIY solar poultry feeder using basic 12V components and a programmable relay.

The Hardware: 12V DC Automation

The beauty of this system is its simplicity. Because it runs on low-voltage DC power, it is safe, affordable, and incredibly easy to pair with a small solar panel. The core components include:

• The Dispenser: A PVC pipe hopper connected to a small 12V DC auger motor (or a linear actuator). When the motor spins, it pushes a set amount of feed down into the trough.
• The Brain: A 12V Programmable Timer Relay. This digital timer acts as the switch, allowing power to flow to the motor at specific times of the day.

Powering the System (Battery & Solar Sizing)

Unlike an incubator or a pond aerator that must run 24/7, an automated feeder only runs for a few seconds at a time. This drastically reduces our power requirements.

The Math: Let's say the 12V motor draws 2 Amps, and we program the timer relay to run the motor for exactly 10 seconds, twice a day (6:00 AM and 5:00 PM). The total run time is only 20 seconds a day! The power consumption is practically zero.

Because the power draw is so minimal, we don't need massive 300W panels. A small 20W to 50W solar panel paired with a compact 12V 7Ah or 12Ah sealed lead-acid (SLA) battery (the kind used in emergency lights or small motorcycles) is more than enough to run the timer relay continuously and spin the motor twice a day, even through weeks of cloudy weather.

The Logic and Programming

Programming the 12V timer relay is where the magic happens. By setting the relay to close the circuit for exactly 10 seconds, we can measure exactly how many grams of feed the auger pushes out in that timeframe. As the flock grows and requires more food, I simply reprogram the relay to run for 15 or 20 seconds instead.

Developer Note: While a physical timer relay works perfectly for a simple setup, the next phase of this project is replacing the relay with an ESP32 microcontroller. This will allow my Uni-Farm mobile app to connect via Bluetooth or local Wi-Fi to adjust feeding schedules dynamically based on the flock's age and my feed formulation algorithms!