Animal Drinking System Guide Element for Teat Location
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional drinking systems for young mammals are unintuitive, making it difficult for them to locate the teat, requiring extensive staff training and increasing the risk of undersupply and disease susceptibility due to delayed feeding.
Innovation Solution
A drinking system with a reservoir chamber, a connecting element, and a guide element that simulates the mother's abdomen, allowing the mammal to approach the teat in a physiological position, reducing training time and enabling easy access for staff support.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If conventional drinking systems with horizontal teats are used, then the system structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but calves have difficulty locating the teat and require extensive staff training time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a guide element as an intermediary component that simulates the mother cow's abdomen. This guide element is positioned above the teat and provides visual and tactile cues that guide calves to the teat location, thereby reducing the training time required without significantly complicating the overall system structure
Solution Approach 2:
The guide element is designed to copy the appearance and conformation of the mother cow's lower abdomen and udder region. By replicating the natural visual stimuli that calves are familiar with, the guide element helps calves intuitively locate the teat, reducing the need for extensive staff intervention and training time
2Reliability
If staff continuously monitor and assist calves at conventional drinking systems, then calves receive timely nutrition, but labor costs and operational complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The guide element enables calves to independently locate and use the teat by providing intuitive visual and tactile guidance. This self-service capability reduces the need for continuous staff monitoring and assistance, thereby maintaining reliable nutrition delivery while reducing operational complexity and labor requirements
3Stability of the object's composition
If the guide element is permanently fixed to the reservoir chamber, then the structure is stable and robust, but cleaning access and system modification become difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The guide element is designed as a separate, detachable component that can be removed from the reservoir chamber. This segmentation allows the guide element to be easily cleaned, inspected, or replaced without disassembling the entire drinking system, while still providing stable guidance when attached
4Ease of operation
If the teat is positioned horizontally on a vertical surface, then the system is simple to construct, but calves find it unintuitive and difficult to locate
Solution Approach 1:
The guide element serves as an intermediary between the vertical surface and the horizontally positioned teat. It creates a visual and tactile pathway that leads calves from the vertical surface to the teat, making the horizontal teat position more intuitive without requiring the teat itself to be repositioned vertically
Data Source
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AI summary
Drinking system 100 for drinking water from mammals, comprising at least: • a reservoir chamber 10 with a bottom surface 10a suitable for receiving liquids or containers for liquids, • a connecting element 11 arranged to allow liquid flow through the reservoir chamber 10 to a suction nipple 20, • a suction nipple 20 connected to the reservoir chamber 10 via the connecting element 11 in such a way that a mammal standing on a surface can take in liquids from the reservoir chamber 10 through this suction nipple 20 by sucking on it, characterized in that the drinking system 100 further comprises a guide element 50 connected to the reservoir chamber 10, wherein the connection of the guide element to the reservoir chamber 10 is located above the suction nipple and the guide element is oriented at a guide angle β of +40° to -10° to the horizontal.so that a mammal can be guided to the suckling nipple 20 by means of the guide element 50.