HOOF
INTEGRATED TEAM SOLUTION
All our individual solutions fit a different process, i.e. from sheep farming to new products which helped our group decide that we would integrate all our individual solutions to create one solution. We as a team decided to go with the idea of Roof Top Farming of sheep and using all our individual solutions as a part of the whole solution. The Roof Top Farm would contain sheep on the roof and the different floors of the building would be used for different purposes.
Levels of the building:
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The roof top will be used to grow the sheep, the area of the building is going to be 500m^2 so it will cater 175 sheep.
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The ground floor is for vehicles that are travelling to and from this sheep farm.
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The first level would be the office/management/business level for the farmers and people working in the building.
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The second level would process some waste wool to edible food for the sheep.
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The third level would be used as a waste plant, the sheep manure would be composted to make a fertiliser that makes grass grow on the top farm level.
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The fourth level will be used for other sheep farming processes i.e. health care of sheep.
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The fifth and sixth floors will be used for sheep shearing.
The building would contain a truck lift to transport sheep from the top of the building. The sheep would arrive at this building at lambing stage and will remain there for the rest of their lives. In the future, when technology advances the building can be run on “static electricity”, generated from waste sheep wool and plastic along with extra solar panels to generate enough electricity to run the entire building. The static electricity would need to be converted into electricity, using a special machine, i.e. like the nanogenerator which is currently being tested out in Atlanta.
Our solution would help sustain the New Zealand Wool Industry in year 2070 as it would increase demand for wool with all different products, including fertilizer, food and power. It would also prove sustainable as it is not taking up valuable land space. These four developments improve the downhill direction of the current industry and should sustain it to 2070.
The table on the left is of possible materials that can be used to implement our solution.
Possible Risks
- Edible wool food before using as food for sheep, it should be tested in similar metabolic functions or conditions of sheep. Because, if anything goes wrong in experimenting there is huge chances of killing it or disturbing its life cycle. This can be minimized by artificially creating sheep body functions and testing the food in it and see if it works.
- With increasing population, the quantity of wool requirement will also increase. This risk can be minimized by starting to raise more number of sheep’s on roof top.
- Static electricity generated is hard to store. Hence it can take longer time than expected to use this electricity for sheep farming.