how to secure a pop door

[abhaya]

I finally have my coop almost finished I an trying to figure out how to secure the pop door at night. Any suggestions or pictures wouls be great.

 

[Beekissed]

Do you mean "pop" door or do you have a door specifically for poop?

I never close my pop door unless I'm retraining free rangers to the nest boxes but I just use a hook and eye bolt for mine. Some folks use a simple turn latch made from a short piece of wood like I use on my big coop door.

 

[jaj121159]

I know fertilizer is expensive, but really securing the poop.

You must mean pop. I use a guillotine door made of metal. I have it roped to a pulley. The door weighs four lbs and is very hard to grip, let alone lift with raccoon sized hands,

 

[2many2count]

Well chicken poop is valuable for gardens but never heard anyone stealing it before soo not sure why your securing it.....

But we just use hook and latches to keep our chickens in at night and the other critters out at night. Just make sure its not something easy for the coons to operate tho cause they have hands lol that get em in trouble. The latches we have have extra thingy to make em harder to work and we put on low down and another higher up out of reach of critters. Hope this helps ya out

 

[sheila3935]

on the inside of the pop door I use swivel hasps down at the bottom one on each side.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I have a guillotine door that I slide up manually and put a peg in to hold it up. The pop door is in the run which is predator proof so that's all I need.

 

[DanEP]

hi I just use a guillotine type door on the inside of the coop that goes down past the opening so that coons can't reach the edges of the door to open it. Just rabbit out slides so that door is fairly tight to the wall and extends down a couple of inches past the opening.I also ran one of the slides along the bottom for the door to drop into for added strenght for being pushed in as well as up.

 

[owler]

I saw on this board an idea that should be pattened by the original poster. I just can't find it now. I have never been comfortable with the idea of not locking the door. I think it would be very possible for a raccoon to open an unlocked pop door by pushing inwards and upwards enough to open the door.



Here is a crude drawing of the mechanism that was in the video:

The weight on the top and the offset pivot point cause the arm to drop to one side when the slack is off of the rope. This moves the arm extension under the locking peg. To open, take the slack off the rope and the arm straightens up and move the extension out from under the locking peg.

I plan on doing this to my new coop within a couple of weeks.

 

[Ferdinand]

I just finished my new coop made from pallets and i used a simple pair of Horizontal rails so its slides left to right. No messing no catches no pullies.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
Owler, you're right, this idea is awesome.