Chicken doggy door?

They have pretty good ventilation and lost of things to play on/with (tires are their favorite). I think I'll just play it by ear. Supposed to get up to a foot these next few days. Yikes.

Pls explain the tires. How do they play with tires?

They just like hopping up and down from them one of the easter eggers likes to sit on the ones outside and sunbathe

I dont think they would be able to lift the door or would be scAred of it when it closes. It's worth a try but vertically split would work because they dont flap they divide. However I would build a small porch for the door.

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My chickens hate the snow and blowing wind, so they would not go outside in the pen once winter hit. So I wrapped my pen with thick 4 gauge clear vinyl, and now they have a greenhouse to enjoy all winter long. They love it, I love it (no more shoveling out the pen and no more frozen waterers during the day). Cost me $50 to do my 15x15 pen, and I have used the same vinyl panels for 3 years now, so at $17 a year, its a bargain!



If you can't wrap the whole pen, you could put up a wind block wall 2 feet in front of the door opening. This would stop the snow from blowing into the coop door. The chickens would go out the door, and turn right or left to go around the wall. It would only need to be 3 feet wide by 3 feet tall to be an effective wind / snow block.

thomasboyle said:

My chickens hate the snow and blowing wind, so they would not go outside in the pen once winter hit. So I wrapped my pen with thick 4 gauge clear vinyl, and now they have a greenhouse to enjoy all winter long. They love it, I love it (no more shoveling out the pen and no more frozen waterers during the day). Cost me $50 to do my 15x15 pen, and I have used the same vinyl panels for 3 years now, so at $17 a year, its a bargain!



If you can't wrap the whole pen, you could put up a wind block wall 2 feet in front of the door opening. This would stop the snow from blowing into the coop door. The chickens would go out the door, and turn right or left to go around the wall. It would only need to be 3 feet wide by 3 feet tall to be an effective wind / snow block.

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Nice! Re: windblock: Two pallets in a narrow A-frame, facing appropriately and possibly covered with repurposed feedbags!

Say! How much warmer do you think the plastic wrap (LOL) keeps the run compared to outdoor temp? Any issues with ventilation?

The wrap does make a difference. I have remote temp gauges in the pen, in the coop and outside the coop that I can check with my phone and computer. Right now it is 24 outside, with 7-10mph wind, so wind chill is 14. It is partly cloudy, and in the wrapped pen it is 29 degrees with no wind chill and the insulated coop is 32, also with no wind chill. On calm sunny days, you can get a 20 degree gain. The better you build it, the greater the heat gain. My indoor / outdoor cats hang out in the front porch during the winter, and 3 of the porch's sides are Anderson sliding glass doors. It is currently 54 in the front porch, and there is no heat source other than the sun. So if you put Anderson sliding glass doors around your chicken run, it would be really nice inside! My cats really like it (and their heated beds too!).

thomasboyle said:

The wrap does make a difference. I have remote temp gauges in the pen, in the coop and outside the coop that I can check with my phone and computer. Right now it is 24 outside, with 7-10mph wind, so wind chill is 14. It is partly cloudy, and in the wrapped pen it is 29 degrees with no wind chill and the insulated coop is 32, also with no wind chill. On calm sunny days, you can get a 20 degree gain. The better you build it, the greater the heat gain. My indoor / outdoor cats hang out in the front porch during the winter, and 3 of the porch's sides are Anderson sliding glass doors. It is currently 54 in the front porch, and there is no heat source other than the sun. So if you put Anderson sliding glass doors around your chicken run, it would be really nice inside! My cats really like it (and their heated beds too!).

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That is just fantastic input! Wonderful to know the temps!

I am doing this on smaller scale monitoring overnight temps in coop with pop door closed. The six chickens raise the overnight temp 10-14 degrees with no additional heat. When I open pop door in the a.m, the internal temp equalizes with outside in 2-3 hours. Will strongly consider all you have said! Thanks!

I used the idea of a doggy door. Instead of paying $20 for an actual door I went to a craft store and bought half a yard of the heaviest plastic I could find there. I spent $6 and cut slits in it and stapled it to the cut out frame. It took the hens a while to figure out that they could go through it but by evening they were going in and out just fine. The run it well protected from predictors so I don't have to close the door to the coop and it allows air circulation in the coop while blocking wind. I would post a picture but the BYC app isn't letting me.


*** I was able to upload a photo of my DIY door

I do happen to use a doggie door that we got at a Habitat for Humanity store and I'd be lost without it! I leave it open 24/7. They absolutely would NOT go through the flaps, even though Ken cut it into strips. Stoopid chickens!

Our run had to be offset from the coop because of a tree Ken didn't want to lose, so what we did was build them a "tunnel" of sorts. It's basically just a two sided box with a permanent cover and the coop itself forming the last wall of it. One opening is on the coop side and the other is on the run side. The added bonus was that it helps with ventilation while blocking wind and snow from getting into the coop! Yayy! And I don't have wake up super early to let them out. The side to the yard is closed off on the north side, on the east side, and on the west side by the coop itself.

I'll post a couple of pictures. It's not a tunnel in the sense that you would think, but it's worked perfectly for almost 4 years now.


This was when we first started putting up the run. You can see the doggie door going into the coop, with a temporary pen set up for them until we got the hoop run finished. If you enlarge the photo, you can see how offset the run had to be....the west side of the run ends right a little bit overlapping the coop. The doggie door is down because we were still working.


Sides done and door ready to go into it's tracks. This one is a slider - we put a hook on the coop and the eye on the doggie door to keep it open. The plastic flap with the strips Ken cut into it was still in place at this point, but they flat refused to use it. After a week of trying everything, we finally cut the flaps most of the way off. Later, we just removed them completely.


Beginning the tunnel. It's just a box made with wood. The floor of it is open, sitting on the dirt, but there's hardware cloth underneath it.


Here we were taking a break...the cover hasn't been cut to size yet but it still makes a dandy place to set tools down while we have a sammich!! Now we keep a 5 gallon bucket of oyster shell and a 5 gallon bucket of scratch on top of it to keep them handy. We were also getting the hardware cloth skirt and apron put on the tunnel at this time.


There is a chicken just going into the coop in this shot. If we ever do another coop build (Lord, no, please!) we will continue to use this design even if logistics don't require it.


Overall look is neat and clean.


Charlie coming into the coop from the tunnel. See where those strips of flaps are? Yeah, well shortly after this was taken, they came completely off.

So a doggie door will work great if you are willing and able to do some modifications to it, and it will work with almost any run/coop configuration. If your run isn't offset like ours had to be, you could even block a couple of the sides going into the coop with some bales, but be forewarned they don't stay bale shaped for long!

Edited to add: We also wrap our hoop run with clear, mesh reinforced greenhouse type sheeting for winter but are careful to leave the south side so that we can roll it up or down, not have it all the way to the ground on the bottom, and have an opening in it above the people door on the north side. The first year we wrapped it, we battened it too much and had water running down the walls inside the run and hanging in drips from the roof part. Too tight, too humid! So we started venting the run as well as the coop, and have had no issues since.