I have to leave mine - a lot. <sigh> Hubby's position with WYGL is such that we have lots of two, three and four day trips. My run is as predator proof as we could possibly make it. Our dog tried digging under and broke and bloodied a toenail - she gave up and never did it again, so I'm confident that the way we have ours set up is as safe as possible. That said, even Fort Knox has folks doing maintenance, patrolling, and guarding, so I'm a firm believer in looking at things from a predator point of view and fixing any weak spots and watching for signs that some critter has shown interest in your birds. If you see any sign of that, reinforce!! I am able to keep my pop door to the run open 24/7 so my chickens can go in and out at will, but I never forget that it takes just one little weak spot for a predator to wreak havoc. So if you are going to have to leave for a couple of days, the very first thing on your list of things to do is check and recheck your coop and run.
Because we are gone so much, I have two feeders. When we are in town, we just use the one I made out of rain gutters because it holds a lot of food and has room for all the chickens to stand side by side in a neat little row and eat. Because it's covered, they can't poop in it or walk through it. When we are going to be gone, we make sure that that one is full, AND the large galvanized hanging metal feeder we add is also full. I use a 5 gallon bucket with horizontal nipples for water. Ken rigged it so that there is a PVC tube that runs from the bucket lid to the outside of the run. All we have to do is take the cover off the outside tube, stick the hose in it and fill it up. We have a little fishing bobber with a metal skewer attached and it sits in the water with the skewer running up through a little hole in the lid of the waterer. As the water level in the bucket drops, so does the height of the little skewer, so we can see at a glance if the water level is getting low. If we are only gone for a day or two, eggs are the only concern. There is always plenty of food and clean water to last a couple of days.
Those are things we did because our "chicken sitter" is our granddaughter. She's been doing this since she was 8 years old and she's now 10. We don't have to worry about a thing while we are gone because we've made the process of caring for the chickens as simple as possible. She does a superb job - we have never had a single little (or big) problem. She can see at a glance if the feeders are low. They are usually just fine and she might top them off if we are gone longer than three or four days, but that's all she has to do. Same with the water. She can see from outside the run if she needs to put the hose in the little PVC tube and add water. Again, not usually needed but she can top if off if she needs to. This is even more remarkable because Katie can do all of this all by herself, with no help or supervision, and she is mildly autistic. It works because we made it possible with planning. If you make the chores difficult, time consuming, or if you end up with someone who really isn't "into" chickens and doesn't care to get too close, this setup will make it easy to still find someone to look in on them.
Eggs are another story. She gathers them a couple of times during the day. I have no roosters so I don't have to worry about any eggs developing if they are out in the heat too long because they aren't fertile. But they do need to be picked up at the very least once a day, preferably twice. When we leave during the winter she picks them up before school, (I have a couple of early morning layers) and after school. That usually suffices since she gets home from school at 3:30 and it gets dark here in winter around 4:30 so the girls are done laying for the day.
With some planning as you build, you can make your coop and run function like a well-oiled machine even if you aren't there. We don't really need Katie to do anything but gather eggs because there is enough food and water. But she loves to do it, and we love letting her. If I had to give up traveling with Ken just because of the chickens, I'd get rid of the chickens!
Thanks for the tips this is right along the ideas I have. I am building my first coop and run combination and pouring lots of concrete, it will be as secure as I can make it. Part of the deal selling the idea of chickens to DH was we would be able to leave them for a week wether or not someone could check in on them. The plans (in my head at this point) will be 22 gallon Brute trash cans for feed and water, water heated in winter (thermocube and stock tank heater) the food will be where they peck it and food drops out underneath. For eggs I am planing roll out nest boxes accessible from the outside with heating pads underneath connected to a thrmocube as well so no frozen eggs. Of course I will test out everything before leaving them alone but we need to be able to leave them at least a week at a time.
