Poultry in motion

FABricate-ing success

The solar-powered, self-propelling coop system is an idea Chris Ayers spent years perfecting. Along the way, he won multiple entrepreneurship competitions to acquire resources and funding, including CAES' 2022 FABricate Entrepreneurial Initiative.

"From a business perspective, it gave us a lot of good marketing materials and gave us pre-seed funding to develop relationships with early customers. Without FABricate, we would not have had that," Ayers said.

Chris Rhodes , CAES director of industry partnerships and FABricate program coordinator, calls Ayers a success story for UGA's entrepreneurship ecosystem.

"When he first came to me a couple of years ago with his idea, he didn't have a clear sense of value for the business, or who his customers were, or even the vocabulary to talk about startups," said Rhodes, adding that Ayers soon took full advantage of resources at CAES and the UGA Innovation District, entrepreneurship competitions and funding at Studio 225, UGA's student entrepreneurship center.

Ayers' success in entrepreneurial contests sparked a relationship with Keith Kelly, CAES alumnus and CEO of Kelly Products.

"We were able to set a prototype unit out on Mr. Kelly's farm for well over a year and test it with around 200 chickens, which gave us a lot of extremely valuable data," said Ayers. "We were able to discover a lot and accrue revenue while doing it."

Testing and turbulence

Chiktopia's successful trial period at the Kelly farm led to further refinement and testing of Ayers' products, and it was not long before Ayers and Chiktopia were ready for commercial sales.

The company's first customer was a farmer in Texas who ordered two broiler units for delivery to his farm.

Then disaster struck.

"In the middle of July, there were two tornadoes. One hit my farm and we had well over 100 trees get taken down over 4 acres worth of forest," said Ayers, adding that one of the two units set for delivery to Texas was in the pasture, exposed to the storm. Despite the violence of the storm, the unit wasn't affected at all.

"That gave me a lot of confidence in our product and the ability to have them placed out in pastures year-round. None of the electronic systems went down and, more importantly, the unit didn't even move," Ayers said.

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