The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Automatic chicken coop door installation notes

automatic chicken coop door opener and closer with hen


Installation of the automatic chicken coop door can be done with just a few wood screws. Jeremy includes some metal brackets that helped fine tune the door to our latest chicken coop made from pallets.

The new automatic chicken coop door came with a timer which makes it easy to set when the flock can go out. I first thought I might try to get one of those dusk to dawn sensor switches, but the coop gets shaded by a hillside that delays the full morning sun by a few hours depending on the time of year.

I would suspect the moment when the chickens can first start to see in the dawn light would be a good time to hunt insects that are trying to get home after a full night of crawling around. This might be a good reason to open the door a little on the early side. That way they can decide when there's enough light out to jump off the roost and start foraging. I guess that means there's a chance that a racoon working the morning shift might happen upon the door open, but I think it might be worth the risk if it means the flock gets more protein rich bugs in their diet.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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