I totally agree with this, we never open the coop yard until the sun is up over the horizon, and we always have them locked up as soon, or before, the sun goes down. If we can't do it ourselves, we have a neighbor do it. They never mind because the chickens put themselves to bed by the time the sun goes below the horizon so all that has to be done is a head count and locking up the coop yard doors. And yes, we learned the hard way. Coyotes taught us never to leave the coop yard open at night.
We used this as well, kept hawks out for sure. This winter most of the time the snow fell through but during heavy snow and especially ice it sagged down very heavily, had to beat it from the bottom with a broom and get snowed on and the ice oh man. We added a plastic roof to our run a couple weeks ago to help manage bedding and waste, the straw sure did stink after the spring thaw so we now have nice try sand.
