Mother Hen™
Your Coop’s Global Guardian
Your Coop’s Global Guardian
Say goodbye to coop door worries with Mother Hen™—a smart monitoring system that watches your coop 24/7, powered by Amazon Cloud technology and AI. Automatic doors are fantastic, but when they fail—like one did, wiping out an entire flock—Mother Hen™ steps in. Whether you’re across the yard or across the world, get daily updates and instant alerts to protect your flock.
Inspired by a real predator attack and built by an engineer, Mother Hen™ is here to keep your chickens safe—one sunrise, one sunset at a time.
Mother Hen™ started with a tough moment—a friend’s flock was wiped out when their automatic door failed, letting a predator in. It was a real loss, and the farm hands turned to our founder, a retired software engineer, and asked, “Can you help?” With 40+ years of tech experience, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. The result? A smart monitoring system that keeps an eye on your coop door—so you don’t have to.
Our Release 1.0 brings you a smart, reliable way to keep your chickens safe by knowing exactly when your coop door should be open or closed. Start with the core system and add accessories to suit your style—here’s how it works, powered by Amazon Cloud and AI:
Prototype—final product may vary.
Prototype—final product may vary.
Prototype—final product may vary.
Alarm Demonstration
Prototype—final product may vary.
Mother Hen™ watches, not controls—it’s the ideal partner for your automatic door system, adding a layer of smarts and security. By knowing your coop’s place in the world, it ensures your flock stays safe from predators, with AI-driven insights and a humane focus on peace of mind. Build your perfect setup—start with the core or add The Egg and Mini-Egg for extra flair!
Sure, you could mount a simple light switch on your coop to check if the door’s open or closed—but that’s where Mother Hen™ leaves basic setups in the dust. We harness AI and Amazon Cloud technology. By sending your door’s status to the Amazon Cloud, we analyze it, make smart decisions, and keep you in the loop with text messages—no matter where you are in the world. For example, our AI crunches your longitude and latitude to figure out the optimum open and close times for your door, so you’re always one step ahead of predators and glitches.
Ready to bring Mother Hen™ to your flock? Automatic doors are fantastic time-savers, but like any tech, they can fail. One such failure let a predator destroy an entire flock—and that’s exactly why Mother Hen™ was born. To make it work, here’s what you’ll need in place:
With these basics set, you’re all ready to team up with Mother Hen™ and keep your chickens safe!
We’re all about keeping your flock safe, but let’s be clear on what Mother Hen™ doesn’t handle. We can’t set your door’s open or close times—most door manufacturers haven’t made that functionality available to us (yet!). We’re hoping to team up with them down the road to change that. For now, Mother Hen™ is your trusty monitor, not a controller. It watches your door’s status and alerts you if something’s off, but it doesn’t touch the door or its schedule—that’s still up to your existing setup.
Mother Hen™ is designed to monitor vertically opening chicken coop doors, partnering seamlessly with your existing setup. Right now, we work with popular models like the FarmLite Automatic Chicken Door Opener and the NyPots Automatic Chicken Coop Door. These doors slide up and down, letting our switch bar keep tabs on their status—open or closed—so you don’t have to guess.
Want the techy scoop? Here’s what powers Mother Hen™ under the hood. Our Wi-Fi Controller and The Egg both run on Espressif’s ESP32-S3—rugged, reliable chips with plenty of horsepower for real-time monitoring and Wi-Fi smarts. On the cloud side, we tap into AWS IoT Core, Amazon’s heavy-hitting platform, to crunch door status data, fire off text alerts, and let our AI work its magic. It’s geek-approved gear keeping your flock safe!
We’re still nailing down the exact price. Stay tuned for final details as we wrap things up!
We’re hard at work turning our Mother Hen™ prototype into a cluck-tastic reality. Expect it to be available in the US market in the second half of 2025, with international markets to follow sometime after, depending on demand. Stay tuned for your chance to snag one and keep your flock safe!
Based in Tennessee, Smith Varmint Works LLC brings over 40 years of software development expertise—including 30 years honed in Silicon Valley’s tech crucible—to a small team with a big mission. With 15+ years mastering cloud development, our founder, a retired software engineer, turned a friend’s devastating flock loss from a predator attack into the spark for Mother Hen™. We’re driven by a passion for innovation and a humane approach, crafting clever, thoughtful solutions to keep your chickens safe and your coop secure.
Ready to protect your flock? Contact us to learn more or join the Mother Hen™ waitlist!
Email: sales@svwllc.com