One feature film of mychicken coopsloomed over my goal of enjoy a two - week holiday without coming home to dead chickens : bulge out door , which are the modest room access on a cage that allow hen to go out in the morning time and descend back in at gloam . They should be closed after the hens go inside at Nox to offer one more layer of security system against nighttime predators , such as raccoons , opossum , weasels and coyotes . It also take to be spread out again for the chickens in the sunup , so they can detached - range of mountains and get some exercise .
The simplest pa room access I ’ve seen is one with a twain of hinges on the eminent end of the gangboard near the bottom of the opening and a hook at the bottom end . After the girls go in for the evening , you just swing the gangplank up to cover the door opening and secure it with the hook . In the morning , you head out and swing the gangway / pop door open . It ’s a good design . However , that ’s still a twice - a - day task that ’s not compatible with taking a vacation or even sleeping in . My married woman and I both firmly believe in going to bottom early and rising late : Neither of us is inclined to get up at break of day for any reason — not even for our chickens !
Three Automatic Door Options
To resolve this predicament , we take three ways to keep us in bed while allow our early Bronx cheer to get their worm .
No Door
In the honest-to-god days , when the integral backyard served as the wimp pen , this twice - daily door ritual was utterly necessary to keeppredatorsout of the chicken coop . But for modern poulet - keepers , if you ’re confident that your pen fencing is inviolable against predatory animal , you could really forgo an operate pop door . It is , after all , just a 2nd level of surety if your playpen is predatorproof . An possibility enceinte enough for the hens to come and go freely would only need to be about 8 - by-12 column inch .
Chicken-Activated Door
This seems ideal to me , as there is no electrical energy to fail and few moving part to break . Andrew Wells , a crybaby keeper in England , appears to have figured this option out . When all of his chickens have climbed onto the roost , their combined weight unit shifts the perch bar so that cables and pulleys lower the pop door . When they hop off the roost in the good morning , it shifts again and opens the pop door . Counter - balancing Milk River jug , partially full of grease , are adjustable to let for variety in chicken population and weight unit . It ’s on my list to put something like this together . A caution : If a wimp dies during the night , the door will still open , but they wo n’t have enough free weight to close it until you aline the gimmick .
Automatic Coop Doors
This is the route my wife and I chose . There are several design on the market these days , at various price point . We were more than well-chosen to expend the money for it if it meant we could arouse up listening to the happy clucking of biddy in their pen while we were still in layer . If you go this route , most of the doors on the mart come with decent installation instructions and videos .
Coop Considerations
Here are some things you should keep in thinker when choosing an machinelike door for your hencoop .
Solar, Hardwired or Battery Powered
If you already have electric power go to your coop , you may desire to predate the extra expense and sentence of instal a solar venire to run your automatic door . On the other helping hand , if it would be troublesome to melt electricity to your coop , then solar may be just what you want : A solar control board is resistant to power outages , after all . Or , better yet , just pick up a assault and battery - powered door undoer .
We did n’t have electricity running to our coop , but it was next to the brick wall of our service department , which does have major power , so I used a Freemasonry bit and hammer Mandrillus leucophaeus — both can be rented if you do n’t own them — to drill a hole through the wall and start the electric cord from the reflex room access into the service department , where I plugged it into an retail store where the timer was not uncover to detritus and feather .
You may want to lead an extension cord from your home to the cage , but with that , you ’re taking a hazard on an electrical short during rainy weather , so verify the cord is plug away into a ground flaw circumference interrupter outlet . If there ’s a shortstop in the corduroy , the outlet will turn off rather than fix a fire . An electrician can well switch out an old retail store for a GFCI .
Or , if you do n’t want to mess up with wires or solar , you could opt for a battery - power automatic room access . In recent long time , stamp battery - power units have become way more effective and , as a result , more common . Brinsea ’s ChickSafe hen house threshold openers , for example , persist on four AA shelling , and the manufacturing business claims one set of electric battery will last at least six months .
Hinge or Twine?
Should you get an automatic door that opens on hinges , like most doors , or one that is bring up up and down by stiff twine on a bobbin , like a window ghost ?
We did n’t look at many reviews of cage doors , retrieve that they could n’t be that unlike , and we pick one that had a good installation TV on their internet site . It ’s the kind that ’s pulled up by a roll of lineage , and it has worked fine for us for years .
Be warn , though : both styles portion out a potential problem . If bedding nonplus in the doorway , the door wo n’t close all the way . If a raccoon does get through the fencing , it could grab the exposed boundary of the door and open it . To forestall that , we set a foot - longsighted 1 - by-4 on the floor , inside the doorway as a pilot to keep the bedding from blocking the possibility .
Timer & Power Supply
Almost all automatic doors depend on a timer . For hardwired models , you could use a common timer that turns living way lamp on and off while you ’re away . For many year , keeper have plug their doors ’ cords into the timekeeper , then plugged the timers into outlets .
Of course , there are plenty of raw item on the market that do it all for you . Newer models have built - in timers on the units themselves . Now that ’s advance .
If your room access is hardwired and the electrical energy goes out , the room access will stay in whatever situation it ’s in — open or closed in . If the power goes out overnight , your wimp will quell sequestered in the henhouse until you spread the pop door or keeper door or are able to reset the timer when the power rejoin .
That ’s why barrage fire - power model are so ready to hand — they work even when the lines are down . And plenty of door openers these days come with a low-cal sensor , too . With this patch of technology at play , the door run up when the sun comes up . And the door shuts itself when gloaming settles in and your chickens are roosting mirthfully in the cage .
If you ’ve got a battery - powered door opener with a light detector and backup timer , you ’re set . you may go ahead and book that holiday you ’ve dreamed of .
After you install an automatic coop door , calculate on the route you chose , there may be some seeable wires inside the coop that would be tempt for the chicken to peck at at , which was the case with ours .
To be on the safe side , I bang a scrap piece of plywood over the wires in a elbow room that would n’t interfere with the functioning of the room access . Because I used screws , I can always remove the plywood for repairs or replacing .
But thankfully , I do n’t have to interest about the Gallus gallus electrocute themselves if they slip a wire for a worm .
