Update on the New Hen House Gate

In the last post, we told you about a purchase we made in which we installed a solar powered automatic hen house door.  Currently, each night we go out and manually close the gate and each morning, we open the gate.  This keeps them safely protected from minks that have plagued the birds.  We had gone out the night of installation and discovered that the gate was closed and all birds were safe and sound.

In the photo below, you can see the solar panel mounted on the wall of the hen house above the door.  There are several settings and a remote control.  You can set it to close at sunset and open at sunrise.  Alternatively, you can set it like an alarm to open at any certain time (6 AM, for example) and close at any time (8 PM, for example).  Or you can use the remote control to open and close at will.

This morning we walked out to the barn to do our morning chores and...  The door was closed.  It was still before sunrise, but we were a little concerned that it wasn't going to open.  As we finished chores, I noticed a green light came on and the door opened.  It was 6:24 AM.  All the birds began filing out, one by one.  A white hen and a red hen zoomed out as you can see!

How about that!  This evening, we walked out at 8 PM to check on the doors.  It was quiet in the pasture.  All the hens were in the hen house, but the door was still open.  We decided to sit out and wait and watch.  At 8:04 exactly, a red light appeared on the door's indicator light and the door slowly closed.

What a lovely contraption!  We opened the door to the hen house and everyone was inside and on the roosting bars.  It's hard to see with the shadow, but there are 47 birds in here, all settled in for the night.  In addition to laying eggs in the nesting boxed that are all closed up for the night, the birds are doing an additional job for me.  They are making fertilizer.  All the poop that falls to the ground will be swept up and used as fertilizer in the garden after allowing it to 'cool down' a little bit.

So far, this is working out to be a good purchase.  No fowl play at all with installation of this hen house automatic door.  Two thumbs up!

The High Tech Hen House

We splurged a little and bought a contraption for the hen house.  Total price tag was $44.  We'll see if it works.  It is a solar powered chicken coop door.  It opens at sunrise and closes at sunset.  The current arrangement goes like this:  At night after all the chickens are roosting in the hen house, I go and close the door so that the minks don't kill all of them.  After they killed 39 in total, we've finally built the flock back up to 40 in total.  Each morning, we go back out to the barn and open the door to the hen house so that they can run around on 3 acres and forage for bugs, worms and grass.

This is not a new invention - I remember my friend in Hathaway had one of these on his hen house many years ago.  I was impressed with it.  It was delivered to the door yesterday and today after work, I got the instructions out and began the installation process.

I took the existing hen house door off and took measurements, using the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once."  It fit like a hand in a glove.  I began screwing everything in place and brought the charging apparatus inside to charge with electricity since it would soon be getting dark. Tonight, we'll manually close it once its charged and then tomorrow we'll begin the automatic sunrise open and sunset close feature.

It's about 6:30 pm and some of the girls are checking out the new door.  "How's this gonna work?"  The opening is four times smaller than it used to be.  Will they figure it out?  I'm sure it will, but after it gets dark, we'll check and see if they all made it in.

It's 9:30 pm and we went out and manually closed the door.  Let's check in and see if they all made their way in to roost:

They did!  The hens and roosters are all up on their roosts and ready to call it a night.  As am I.  Good night everyone!