Hen door

[jwatts]

Do you have power near the coop? If so. its a little expensive but an automatic coop door is the best investment i ever did to our coop. I made a DIY door and it works on a timer. Theres alot of time and money into the backyard flock,i sleep comfortably knowing there safe in there.

 

[da417]

I lock my girls up every night regardless. I dont just shut them in, I lock the doors. One night I was late locking them in and found a skunk happily crunching away on eggs in the nest....I try to not be late anymore.

 

[JanetS]

I always lock up my girls at night. This raccoon is a nightly visitor.

 

[luvmychixandducks]

Absolutely lock down.
My coop has a sliding (up and down) hen door and I affixed a bolt lock to the top of the door, and drilled a hole for the bolt to secure the door in closed position. To open the door I throw the bolt- lift, and throw the bolt again- the bolt sits on top of the frame of the door to keep it open.
Any raccoon who can climb can get over the chain link fence that is the run; the netting over the top to keep out hawks and to keep the chickens in is no protection against a hungry mammal, and a closed but unsecured hen door is not safe from their nimble little fingers.
I'd hate to go to all the trouble of locking cleanout doors, adding netting and chickenwire, and then lose everything to a weasel or a coon for want of a secured hen door.

 

[grams54]

Do you have power near the coop? If so. its a little expensive but an automatic coop door is the best investment i ever did to our coop. I made a DIY door and it works on a timer. Theres alot of time and money into the backyard flock,i sleep comfortably knowing there safe in there.

 

[ozarkchicks]

I doubt if its made of good solid hardware cloth that anything will get in but I would for sure close the hen door nice and tight. My coop doesn't have a door to the coop, it's sort of hard to explain but basically the coop is open to the run, the run is very secure and sturdy though

 

[Pathfinders]

We not only lock our main coop doors, we added burglar bars to the windows, after having some two-legged predators come and steal some of our birds one year. Ain't nothin' getting in that coop now!

 

[JanetS]

Wow!! How did you know it was a two-legged predator?

 

[Pathfinders]

Well, it's a funny story, happened about five or six years ago.

That coop has windows with screens, but we felt they were too flimsy to keep the raccoons out (we had seen little raccoon hand prints on the side of the coop one morning in the dew), so we bolted hardware cloth over the outside of the windows. So it was pretty much predator Fort Knox once it was locked up for the night.

One night I heard our Anatolian (who lives in with the goats) barking like mad, but when I put my head out the front door I couldn't hear or see anything else. He was pretty young at that point, and he often barked at lots of silly things, so I went back inside and ignored it. The next morning when we opened up we noticed that the hardware cloth covering the window facing the road had been cut open, and I realized I missing easily half of my birds, including my best Maran's cock bird, who was extremely valuable, as well as a number of my Marans hens and Ameraucana hens (they apparently couldn't catch the Ameraucana cocks.) It was December, so everything was together, not in breeding pens.

As I looked at the window, I could see that someone had taken wire cutters and cut the hardware cloth all the way down two sides and bent it back, knocked the screen out (we kept it in to keep mosquitoes out), and jumped in through the window. On the floor I found some strings, of the sort that come from feed bags, which led me to believe the thieves had brought feed bags with them to use to carry the birds away with.

Just so sad. We live in a very rural area, and people do steal things, other homes have been broken into and guns and valuable items stolen - we're lucky, folks know we always have at least one Great Dane in the house, and don't bother the house. But I guess the coop by the road was a target. Not much I could do, except file a police report with the Sheriff, which I did.

Several months go by, and one morning just before school I'm drinking my coffee and reading the paper and I notice an article about a neighbor down the road who had been arrested the night before for allegedly stealing drugs and money and property from a man that she was supposed to be providing care for. Wow, I thought! Who'd have thought that of her! Just as I am reading that, my younger daughter (who carried her new cell phone with her everywhere), called me from the coop which she was opening up before school and was yelling excitedly "Mom, mom, Penny is back, and all the other birds!"

Now Penny was her favorite hen (doesn't every kid have a hen named Penny?), who she was very distraught had been taken, and about which I was really mad, as I was pretty sure the birds had been taken to be eaten, although I didn't tell my kids that. I leapt out of my chair, ran up the hill, and sure enough, whoever had stolen our birds and brought them back the night before and dumped them back in the pen (which has electric poultry netting) outside the coop.

And as we thought about it, it made sense. If our neighbor had been arrested, her kids would have brought the birds back before the Sheriff had come to their place to search it for the man's stolen property, right? I called the Sheriff later that day and told him our birds had come back. He said there wasn't much he could do without proof, and unless I could prove they'd been on her place (which I couldn't), he couldn't prosecute her, but she had enough going on as it was, and she wound up going to jail for the other thing anyhow, so it didn't really matter.

I was angry because a) she blew my biosecurity as I am NPIP and she was not (of course) and b) the one bird I didn't get back was my Marans cock bird (I presume they ate him.)

But after that we put burglar bars on the windows of that coop, and never had a problem since. All our other pens are 'way back down from the road, and we're considering moving that one this year too, but it's big, 10' x 12', and would be a major undertaking to do. But it might be worth it, because we've had a number of weird episodes where people just pull into the driveway and sit looking at my chickens, making me sorry I ever put it up there in the first place. With the economy as bad as it has been for so long, I think I'd like to have it back down where folks can't see it from the road with the others...

 

[JanetS]

What a story! Glad you got most of your birds back. I've never thought about having to protect my chickens from two-legged predators.