Essential for free-range chickens: electronic door opener

First, of course, I tried the "Do It Yourself Automatic Chicken Door" approach

That's always my first idea...

I called an engineer friend of mine, described the problem, and set him to thinking.

He came up with something, but it was complicated (when he said "solenoid" I shuddered) and not so cheap. He said, "wouldn't it be simpler to get one that's already on the market?"

He's a DIY guy too, so when he said this I listened. However, there are some people online who are making their own light-sensitive or timer-operated doors.

Here's a guy who's thinking about it - nifty-stuff.com and here's his prototype (as pictured).

He wrote: After years of thinking about this, and after 2 separate raccoon attacks I finally found some time to create a prototype of my auto chicken coop door closer. ... The most recent coon attack was 3 weeks ago when a gang of 4 coons came into the coop just an hour after sunset. They were able to kill a hen and our only duck before I got out there to scare them away. It is a terrible feeling knowing that if you had only gone out a few moments earlier that everybody would be fine. It only takes a single night of forgetting, or not getting home in time to lock up the coop and an entire flock could be destroyed."

So anyway, if you are handy with electronics you can make one, I guess. But that's not what I did.

The VSB electronic door opener for the chicken coop

Keep your henhouse safe.

This unit mounts above the henhouse opening. You can buy a door for it, but I made my door out of a piece cut from leftover tin roofing. I punched a hole in the door and put a key chain ring through it (otherwise the sharp edge of the tin will cut the string).

I added a catch because with my henhouse, unfortunately I have to open the whole front of the coop every day to take out the eggs.

The unit uses 4 AA batteries. It is extremely easy to install. Basically, you just screw it into the wall - make sure it's all flush (that the string falls in the same plane as the door).

VSB electronic doorkeeper: expensive but worth it.

How much is it worth to you not to come home and find your chickens replaced by a heap of bloody feathers?

Installing your new automatically-closing chicken coop door

You can actually read the installation manual online but it may look intimidating. It's easier when you have the thing in front of you.

The people at Foy's actually use this gizmo themselves and helped me a couple times when I've had questions.

As I recall, I pretty much took it out of the box, added batteries, and screwed it to the wall.

I wrote a blog post about installing the chicken door.

I wrote this when I was first installing the door. To read the rest: How to install the electronic doorkeeper.

Here's a problem with having chickens: they want to go in their house at nightfall and not a minute sooner.

Tuesday, nightfall was about 7:21 pm. I had to be directing the Triangle Jewish Chorale at 7:30.

After nightfall, though, the raccoon comes - I know because he gnawed the feeder off its string and unscrewed the wingnut again, and hauled the whole thing off into the field. He would happily bite the heads off sleeping chickens.

So if I go out before the chickens are in their house, I may come back to bloody disaster. Considering this, waiting impatiently until the chickens finally straggled up the ramp, I was late to rehearsal.

There seems to be one, and only one, online solution: the VSB Electronic Doorkeep, made in Germany. It has a light sensor and a string which slowly rolls up, pulling the door with it, in the morning, and lets the door down at night...

From the Foys catalog:

Again, I am not affiliated with Foys in any way. Just a satisfied customer.

What a great product! Used in Europe for years. Foy's is proud to be your distributor in North America.

Foy's truly believes that many different uses will be found for this Electronic Doorkeeper. Cat and dog owners may use it to open and close an entrance to the dog house, garage or out building. Poultry fanciers may want to use it to allow the flock to go outside and then close it when it gets dark. Pigeon fanciers will be able to allow a door to open at dawn and close it at a chosen time later.

This automatic control device can be used wherever a vertical sliding gate is to be opened and closed to respond to light conditions at dawn and dusk.

The sensitivity of the system is adjustable. Using one of our timers, it is not only possible to open and close the sliding gate according to the time setting or to open and close it in response to light conditions, but it is also easy to set a maximum for the closing time.

Other uses for the Electronic Doorkeeper: poultry houses, dog and cat entrances, etc. Perhaps you want an animal to be released at a certain time, after you leave for work for example. Just set the time and it will open. You can close it at your convenience or set a time for it to close automatically.

The chicken coop door should slide in a kerf, or track.

This will keep the raccoons out.

Raccoons are unbelievably dextrous. They learned to turn the toggle bolt that I used to use to close the coop door - in fact, they were able to unscrew a wingnut that kept an automatic chicken feeder together and carry the feeder across the grass!

So they can pry up the edges of a sliding door unless you deter them. I ran a kerf with my tablesaw in three pieces of trim and mounted them on both sides of the door and (most important) the bottom. Now, when the door is closed it has a secure lip everywhere a raccoon's fingers could catch hold.

A chicken catastrophe diagnosed!

Be careful of light inside the coop when you use the VSB

Using an automatic curtain opener to make a chicken door

The heart of this system is a "Motor drapery controller, model no: AAM80." See Automatic chicken coop door for details. The author says:

It cost about $120 in parts. We won't discuss the cost of labor...

Another guy used this same system, you can see his door in action (video) at Dinosaurs and Robot's Automatic Chicken Door.

One more tip: recycled egg cartons

What to do when your stock of egg cartons runs out

My chickens lay about 7 eggs a day, and I live alone. So where in the world am I supposed to get that many egg cartons?

My guilty secret is that I love diet coke. So I have LOTS of empty diet coke 2-liter bottles in the recycling bin.

I cut the tops off, put in a dozen eggs, slip the tops back inside the bottoms, and duct tape them together. This is how I transport them to my friend Bob's house, and how he sells them to the neighbors.