Closing chicken coop at night

Lock them in at night. There are numerous raccoons, possums and even coyotes in the city, even though you think there aren't. I'm betting you don't sit out in your backyard at 3 a.m. to see, but they're there. And if you haven't used hardware cloth and completely covered the pen with it, a raccoon will reach through, grab a chicken by its feathers, pull a piece through and eat it alive one bite at a time through the small openings in the fence. It's not pretty.

 

Yeah lock them in. It's easy though because they go in there on their own!

If you are concerned you won't be able to do it regularly, you can look into getting an automatic chicken door

 

I lock mine behind a steel door and I'm out in a rural area.

There are teenage and young adults that are bored every once in a while. A few years back they went up to all our houses and dumped our full garbage cans in the street. I wouldn't put it past them to mess with my hens.

Those boys were caught, 4 of them in 2 trucks. There are also a lot of blown up mail boxes here along with stolen mail.

We see kids run through our yard at times too. It's easy to sneak out in the middle of the night for some of these kids. They've poisoned dogs too.

 

If you don't secure the door somehow something will get in and kill one.....it's not easy getting them back in after that happens.

 

From what I understand by your post is that your coop and the run are all enclosed. You are just wondering about a separate door that allows the chickens access from their coop to their run, correct?

I am in town also, with a fenced in backyard. Neither of my coops have doors from the coop to the run. This may come back to bite me in the rear if something ever digs under it, but I rely on the dogs to alert me to a predator also. The one time we did get an opossum in the backyard, I thought my dogs were going to bust through the kitchen door. It hadn't made a sound, and hadn't gotten close enough to set off the motion lights either. They had it dead before I knew what was even going on.

 

If you have an option to close the doors I surly would even a cat can be a problem ... Better safe than sorry

 

I lock mine up, I live in the country but even if I lived in town I'd lock them up you can never be to careful

 

Wide open 24/7. I count on my Great Pyrenees to keep them safe.

 

I live in the country and have a fenced back yard. I leave the door between the coop and the run open and depend on my dog who is also in the back yard to keep the predators away. If you have a dog, you will probably be fine leaving the door open. The only way to be absolutely sure they are safe, is to lock them in.