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Hi, I'm Deysi from Design Squad,
and we're here with Sue and her family,
who raise chickens in their backyard.
Welcome to our snowy chicken coop.
We're glad you're here.
Do you like having your own chickens?
Yes, because we get our own fresh eggs.
DEYSI: When people produce their own food,
it helps the environment.
Less trucks need to deliver food to the store,
which means less gas.
And less cars need to travel to the store to buy food,
which also means less gas.
We have two different breeds.
We've got Rhode Island Reds,
and then these are Barred Rock or Plymouth Rock.
So right now in our coop we have an indoor feeder.
- So you've seen our indoor feeder,
but we need an outdoor one.
All right, let's go.
Okay, guys, I'm challenging you to take some old plastic
and make a food dispenser for chickens.
The teams are Peter, Kyra, and Bianca.
And then Nathan, Caleb, and Daisy.
Okay, we're going to be feeding some chickens,
but we're going to need teamwork to do it.
Good luck.
May the best chicken-feeding team win.
(laughter)
DEYSI: Working in teams is a great way to come up
with different solutions to a problem.
We should have a funnel.
- Well, I'm thinking...
- Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
We take the small water bottle and we cut off the tip
so that we have that for the funnel.
When the chickens get fed, we have our feed that gets put in.
Yeah, what if you have... can I... may I?
- Yeah.
- What if we have a water bottle here,
so this is going to be a water bottle,
but the thing is, the top of the water bottle,
we're going to cut that off so it's going to be a top
we can put on and off
to put the bird seed in and out,
and then it can go down
and through, like, a tube type of thing.
So we're going to have a jug right here
so that it can store all the bird feed.
Then we'll have a bottle so that they can easily pour
the bird feed into the giant jug.
Then from the jug's nozzle there'll be a pan
so that the chickens can go inside and eat.
- But we're going to have to stack a couple
because won't they be able to, like, not fit?
Because those pans, I think some of them are pretty small.
- Definitely, we'll have to have at least two pans
stacked on each other.
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DEYSI: Make sure that everyone has a role to play.
You could even divide up the work.
- We're going to need to separate these,
so I'll cut off the top for this one,
and then what if you work on the tray,
and then you can work on the bottom one.
- Got it.
- May I borrow the scissors?
- Sure.
- Guys, do you think this looks good for the funnel
at the bottom?
- Yeah. - That looks awesome.
Plastic is a good material to reuse.
100 million plastic bottles are used around the world every day,
but only 20% of those are recycled.
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How are we doing over here, guys?
- Pretty good, pretty good.
Pretty much what's going to happen
is from their big reservoir of seed it's going to come down
through here and it's going to go down through a hole,
which I'm going to make over here.
And it pours into this little container here
that's going to hold most of the seed.
So when the chickens come inside, they'll be able
to go directly into here and just start eating.
So it's kind of like a chicken bistro sort of thing.
(laughter)
- It works.
- This one's hungry.
(laughter)
- Yup.
Funnel.
And it would be a bit higher off the ground.
- Yeah, to stop it, and then...
We still need a way to stop it from flowing all the way out.
Guys, I have an idea.
So we have these two yogurt container thingies.
What if we were to cut a half-moon
in both of these containers, and then we have it
so then we would, like,
rotate it around to open it and close it.
So when they align, it will come out,
when they're in disalignment, they'll get stopped up
and won't pour out.
DEYSI: It's not easy to choose one design to work on as a team,
but you should always go with the best idea,
even if it isn't yours.
So are you guys ready to present to Sue and her family?
- Yeah.
DEYSI: All right, present away.
Okay, so this is the Half-Moon Rising chicken feeder.
You will pour it in here, and it goes on the top again.
See, none is coming out right now.
- A little bit more.
- A little bit more, even more.
- This will all be held up, mounted on a fence.
(making pecking sound)
(laughter)
(applause)
- Thank you, that was great.
Now we're going to go see the second design.
All right, so the way this works,
this is our Chicken Bistro.
This is where you can funnel it in.
This is the reservoir where you can hold
a ton of the chicken feed, and this is our little regulator
with a small little hole.
So the chicken feed will constantly be going down,
but it'll go really slow so the chickens will be able to eat it
fast enough that the little pan won't overflow.
- Awesome!
Nice job.
DEYSI: Here's a quick recap.
The two half-moon yogurt containers worked really nicely
to regulate the bird feed,
but someone has to go outside to operate it.
The Chicken Bistro has a larger reservoir for feed,
but with this design, someone also needs to go outside
to regulate the feed.
So do you guys have a final decision?
They're both amazing, so it was tough for us
to come up with a winner.
But we think the most convenient and practical one
would be the Half-Moon Rising.
Congratulations.
(applause)
Let's go see if it works, let's go try it.
- There it goes.
- The chickens are closing in on us.
DEYSI: Yeah, winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Woo-hoo!
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