Do you ALWAYS lock your coop at dusk?

[RedfogsFlock]

Quote:
There is one day a week that we leave before sun up, and don't get home till well after dark, we leave our girls completely cooped that day. I sneak in after they all goto roost the night before and fill all the food and water containers extra full for them. This way there's enough to go around and a little extra.

 

[SandyK]

I lock them up every night and have an enclosed run.

 

[Odette]

Our "coop" only has a regular sized door which we generally prop open in the morning to let the girls out, and only close it up in the evening. This way the girls can free range throughout the day while still having access to their nest boxes. We try to close up shortly after the girls go in for the night, but have occasionally forgotten until full dark. So far, we haven't had any issues due to the door being left open and hopefully it stays that way!

 

[Akane]

If it isn't locked up before dark there are odds of a lost chicken. If it doesn't get locked up at all that night there will definitely be a lost chicken or 2 or 3....

 

[redhen]

Its not always done at dusk...but its locked every night and we do a head count every night... some nights its later than others.

 

[mamagardener]

I shut them up in the coop every night, but not always at dusk, sometimes not for 2 or 3 hours after dark.

 

[FabulousMandy]

Our coop is raised above the ground and has an very spacious enclosed run attached to it. The run itself has a little gate so I can let the girls out into the yard, but there's just a square hole cut out of the side of the coop with a little ladder so they can jump in and out of the run whenever they please. I can access the inside of the coop by opening the roof and I make sure that's always closed, but I'm not worried about crafty predators living in the middle of a concrete jungle (no raccoons, snakes, etc) so I'm not worried about anything sneaking into the coop via the run access hole. If it weren't for stray dogs (and if my yard was completely enclosed) I'd never lock them up

.

 

[SurprisingWoman]

I have a check safe to make sure the coop is locked. We don't close the back blinds until the coop has been closed. One night the blinds got closed without the coop being closed and I assumed....

scared me to death when I realized they had been open all night.

Now we have even more checksafes in place.

 

[karen71]

Lock the coop up tight every night - sometimes a little after dark - if we are going to be real late I have my FIL who lives next door lock up the coop - thinking about an auto door maybe DH can make one .

 

[TheSawyerFlock]

I always try to shut them in at night, but for the last week or so, two of the laying hens have positioned themselves heads-out, tails in right in the opening and REFUSE to move. If I try to use my hands to put them in, they peck at me! Anyone else had this problem? I tend to ascribe more human personality to them than they probably deserve, so it looks to me like they're trying to tell me that they don't want me to shut it every night. We have a completely enclosed coop and live in the city, so I'm not too worried about bug animals, but rats and other small rodents could, I guess, be an issue if they dug under the chicken wire... Anybody else have chickens participating a sit-in?