Does my coop need to have power?

[Cindy in PA]

I have had electric to my coop since it was built in 1993. My small guinea coop (was a tractor) does not have electric & I much prefer to have it. I use a water heater. lights & auto coop door in recent years. Really easy to run electric, mine is about 150 feet from the house.

 

[christwodog]

I never ran power to my coop until a couple weeks ago after a feral dog pack literally chewed through wood to get into my 8 weeks old babies section of the coop. They killed and ate all 4 of my babies, but were not able to get thru to the main section of the coop where my adults are. So the next day my husband ran hot wire around the whole coop, three strands at different heights. So we now have to plug in the girls coop at night, to make sure if the dogs come back, they will get quite a shock. It has already killed a young possum, which I felt terrible about, but we don't know what else to do as long as people dump their unwanted dogs out here and they form packs. So that's the only reason I have power out to the coop. Oh, and we put up some solar powered motion detector lights also, in case of power outage.

 

[Chickassan]

It isn't per say nessacary to have power to you coop, but it is very handy.