Automatic coop door killed chicken

[Trish1974]

I am so sorry that happened to you, how awful! I remember seeing a thread on here last summer or fall of that happening to someone.

 

[lingon]

I just saw this thread. So sorry if you solved the problem already, and sorry for your loss. We had this happen with our automatic coop door that we built ourselves back in the beginning. Ours has a safety switch on it so if anything touches the edge of the door while it is moving it should stop. But it malfunctioned. It was such a horrible thing that we had killed our own chicken.

Our door works with an Arduino and so it knows the sunrise and sunset by the calendar and we now have it close an hour after sunset. I was thinking it would be not too difficult to add a light beam switch across the bottom of your door so if that light beam is blocked by anything the door would not get any power to it. Kind of like automatic garage door closers have now. But it looks like your door is very well packaged so it might be hard to get into the power line inside of it. Another possibility would be to have a standalone Arduino and stepper motor that rotates a board into the place if there’s something blocking the door so that if the door tries to close it just jams.

It does surprise me that a manufactured chicken door doesn’t have a safety switch. Have you tried sticking your hand or a board in there and seeing what happens?

 

[lingon]

Never mind, looking at your door again the power cord from the controller panel to the door actuator is right out there, so you could run that through an arduino relay shield, probably, and only have it connected when there’s nothing blocking the door.

 

[erkme73]

Sorry to revive an old thread (especially as my first post), but I just suffered from this tragic event myself. I was using a generic (Chinese) closer from eBay. It has an IR safety beam that will prevent the closure if something is breaking the beam. Unfortunately, I had the beam set about two inches above the threshold and about 2" in front of the exterior of the door.

WHile the door take about 30 seconds to close, and is quite noisy, last night one of my easter eggers decided to take a nap with her head laying out of the threshold. When the door activated, it did not wake her (it usually causes all of them to stir). The door came all the way down, and didn't wake her until it was too late for her to pull back. The door closed with less than 1/8" gap at the bottom, so I know it was a quick death.

What's even more heartbreaking is that I added these two easter eggers about 10 weeks ago to my flock. They were naturally smaller, and got bullied quite a bit - so the two of them have been inseparable. They went everywhere together, joined at the hip. If you picked up one, the other would stay in your shadow. Now the other is all alone. My 6 and 8yo kids are devastated.

I have cameras in the coop and run, so the even was captured. I would post the video, but being this is my first post, I do not want to upset anyone.

 

[lingon]

I'm so sorry. It's a really hard thing to go through. I keep telling myself that it's a good thing that life is fragile, or we wouldn't value it at all. But I do hate that life is so fragile.

 

[Auntiejessi3]

 

[RoyalChick]

Sorry to revive an old thread (especially as my first post), but I just suffered from this tragic event myself. I was using a generic (Chinese) closer from eBay. It has an IR safety beam that will prevent the closure if something is breaking the beam. Unfortunately, I had the beam set about two inches above the threshold and about 2" in front of the exterior of the door.

WHile the door take about 30 seconds to close, and is quite noisy, last night one of my easter eggers decided to take a nap with her head laying out of the threshold. When the door activated, it did not wake her (it usually causes all of them to stir). The door came all the way down, and didn't wake her until it was too late for her to pull back. The door closed with less than 1/8" gap at the bottom, so I know it was a quick death.

What's even more heartbreaking is that I added these two easter eggers about 10 weeks ago to my flock. They were naturally smaller, and got bullied quite a bit - so the two of them have been inseparable. They went everywhere together, joined at the hip. If you picked up one, the other would stay in your shadow. Now the other is all alone. My 6 and 8yo kids are devastated.

I have cameras in the coop and run, so the even was captured. I would post the video, but being this is my first post, I do not want to upset anyone.

Oh I am so sorry. That is very, very, sad.

I must say I have never gone with an automatic door because of fear of this issue.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Yes, this is an old post, but it's worth a look as we get more automated in our lives:

We have experience with automatic doors, but there is a catch! This is HUGE if the door doesn't have an auto-reverse feature (like a garage door) or there is enough force that a chicken body won't stop it from moving for lack of power in the door motor.

In short, THE DOOR MUST GO DOWN BEFORE THE LIGHTS GO OUT. I didn't see anything about lighting in the initial post, except that it was 45 mins after dusk. If a bird stops in the doorway under the automatic door and doesn't move further AND the lights then go out, they can't see the door coming down and don't know to move. They're frozen like deer caught in headlights, and the result is what the OP found :-(

We have dual entry/exit doors on our coop, and both have automatic doors that are set to close 10 minutes BEFORE the lights in the coop go out. The ONE time we had that reversed (lights out before door went down), we lost a hen. Now, on the coop timers spreadsheet that my bf keeps, there are BOLD letters and red outlines warning that no matter where the timers are set based on the time of year, the coop door CLOSING operation MUST precede the automatic lights going out - NO EXCEPTIONS.

 

[erkme73]

Yes, this is an old post, but it's worth a look as we get more automated in our lives:

We have experience with automatic doors, but there is a catch! This is HUGE if the door doesn't have an auto-reverse feature (like a garage door) or there is enough force that a chicken body won't stop it from moving for lack of power in the door motor.

In short, THE DOOR MUST GO DOWN BEFORE THE LIGHTS GO OUT. I didn't see anything about lighting in your initial post, except that it was 45 mins after dusk. If there was no light in the coop for a bird stopped in the door to actually SEE the door coming down, then they didn't know to move, and the result is what the OP found :-(

We have dual entry/exit doors on our coop, and both have automatic doors that are set to close 10 minutes BEFORE the lights in the coop go out? The ONE time we had that reversed, we lost a hen. Now, on the coop timers spreadsheet that my bf keeps, there are BOLD letters and red outlines warning that no matter where the timers are set based on the time of year, the coop door CLOSING operation MUST precede the automatic lights going out - NO EXCEPTIONS.

It's interesting that you say that about the lighting. I played with that over the course of many nights trying to figure out when the best time was to close the door. Instead of relying on the internal timer of the opener, I tied it to my Home Assistant home automation system. Ultimately, I ended up with the door closing 45 minutes after sunset.

But, I have a very bright LED strip that runs the length of the ceiling in the coop (and under the exterior awning above the door) that starts a 30 minute dimming cycle AFTER the door close trigger has been sent. The chickens were often waiting until nearly completely dark before coming inside. Lights inside the coop drew then in just a bit earlier. So, to answer your concern, yes, the door closes BEFORE the lights dim down.

I added the awning lighting since the chickens sitting on the awning at dusk often were too unsure about getting down after it got too dark. By adding under-awning lighting, they were able to see the ground and hop down safely before the door closed.

It was all working great until last night. At this point it feels like an after-accident investigation... The real culprit was the IR safety sensor being mounted too high on the stock bracket/holes. It was a good 2" off the threshold, and 2" to the exterior. The chicken heads were just not big enough to trigger it.

Had they not been sleeping so hard, or the sensor been lower, this wouldn't have happened. I've relocated the sensor to where even a pencil lying across the threshold breaks the beam. Hindsight is 20/20 and I could kick myself for not considering this scenario.

I've sent a message to the seller of the door opener, along with a link to the video of the accident, asking that they redesign the bracket to bring the sensor closer to the threshold.

 

[Swbertrand1]

It's interesting that you say that about the lighting. I played with that over the course of many nights trying to figure out when the best time was to close the door. Instead of relying on the internal timer of the opener, I tied it to my Home Assistant home automation system. Ultimately, I ended up with the door closing 45 minutes after sunset.

But, I have a very bright LED strip that runs the length of the ceiling in the coop (and under the exterior awning above the door) that starts a 30 minute dimming cycle AFTER the door close trigger has been sent. The chickens were often waiting until nearly completely dark before coming inside. Lights inside the coop drew then in just a bit earlier. So, to answer your concern, yes, the door closes BEFORE the lights dim down.

I added the awning lighting since the chickens sitting on the awning at dusk often were too unsure about getting down after it got too dark. By adding under-awning lighting, they were able to see the ground and hop down safely before the door closed.

It was all working great until last night. At this point it feels like an after-accident investigation... The real culprit was the IR safety sensor being mounted too high on the stock bracket/holes. It was a good 2" off the threshold, and 2" to the exterior. The chicken heads were just not big enough to trigger it.

Had they not been sleeping so hard, or the sensor been lower, this wouldn't have happened. I've relocated the sensor to where even a pencil lying across the threshold breaks the beam. Hindsight is 20/20 and I could kick myself for not considering this scenario.

I've sent a message to the seller of the door opener, along with a link to the video of the accident, asking that they redesign the bracket to bring the sensor closer to the threshold.

We, unfortunately, do not have that sensor, but we discovered through some investigation that we could monitor (trial and error) after we lost one of our birds that the chickens just will NOT move once it's dark. If they happen to be in the way of the door, then that door will come down on them. That's a fact - just try to move one of your birds in the dark with a red light on (they can't see red light). They resist the push to move because they can't see.

We ran through the scenarios over and over with our doors and came up with the same solution over and over - the door must go down in the light. I'm sure our chickens thought we'd lost our minds, but it has worked now for about 4 years. If one of them is in the doorway, and we have a few that like to park themselves there on the way in at dusk, they get the message once that door starts to move! The door comes down, and they have about 10 minutes to find their spot for the night. Once all are in, we come behind them and do a head count.

I don't understand exactly how the IR sensor works to stop the door, but I definitely sense that you're on the right track to changing how it functions. In the end, the one thing we found that worked was making sure that door went down when there was plenty of light. Once the door is closed, then we have timers extinguishing the lights...

So sorry to hear about your rooster too! It's a horrible way to lose a member of the chicken family, but things do happen, and we learn from them for better or worse...