Coop door - to close or not to close??

[frogman]

If your coop and run are secure (every whole plugged, hardware wire everywhere), is it safe to leave the coop door open at night?? We will be traveling for 5d and will not be able to open and close each day. (Electric doors are SO expensive!)

 

[21hens-incharge]

Do you have a chicken sitter? Someone to make sure they have water and food?
If so can they do it for you?

I am a firm believer in it needing to be opened and closed. I do not trust that something will not be able to get in the run.
We cannot make a run truly predator proof only predator resistant. It depends on what predator one may be dealing with as well.

In the end it is up to you. I would worry more about not having water or food than a predator if you have taken proper precautions.

 

[frogman]

Food and water are great - followed some of the other suggestions with PVC pipes and gallon waterers with nipples.

 

[21hens-incharge]

What kind of predator is your biggest/strongest or smartest in your area?
If it is a raccoon I would still be concerned. They are devious and will pull parts of chickens through wire if the chicken is sleeping outside. I know you have hardware cloth but it cannot withstand dogs like the ones I have. (120 pounds of determined stubbornness.)
Is your coop inside an already fenced yard to prevent roaming or stray dogs?

(personal experience with a stray dog..... Neighbor down the street had a large black dog that jumped their fence. It came down to my yard 8 houses away and jumped my 4 foot fence. It was after my rabbits. Luckily I pulled up as another neighbor was coming out of my back yard dialing the cell phone like mad. I heard the rabbits screaming. Yes they scream. When I got to the back yard the dog was under the hutches trying to get to them from there since the frontal attack was useless.
Needless to say it got a free ride to the pound. My hutches were made of heavy gauge cage wire and very very beyond heavy. I lost 2 rabbits the next day I assume from the stress of the attack.)

 

[ChickenMammX4]

Auto doors aren't terribly expensive, we built our own, bought a add-a-motor chicken door motor and a lamp timer. Put it on our existing guillotin pop door for about $100.

 

[rgunn1]

With our current coop we've been leaving the door open by necessity. The birds are outgrowing the coop and are always roosted outside the coop (but in their enclosed run) at night. We've been doing this for a few months now with no problems, BUT our coop is close enough to the house that.... if anything got near it our dogs would attack.

That being said, I've seen a few people on here building runs with roosts and nesting boxes and whatnot that don't really even have an enclosed coop. Look at "open air coops." If they can make that work it makes me wonder why there's any controversy over the open/closed door question. I've seen it crop up a few times, but to me it's a non-issue. If your birds are safe, they are safe.

 

[LaurelC]

I am converting a duck pen into an open air coop. I am roofing the entire thing, using the old duck house as nest boxes, and built a small area in a corner at the top for roosting. 2 of the sides will be enclosed all year, and the others will be removable and only installed during the cooler months. The bottom will be entirely open, though I do expect to install poop slings at some point. I can't imagine this will be a problem at all. Fwiw, the pen is very secure and in the time we had the ducks, there was no evidence of predators at all. I'm sure our dogs going out there peeing on everything helped dissuade raccoons and whatnot.