Problems getting an automatic door to close in a deep litter coop

[aart]

I tried remedying this by adding a lip to the inside of the door frame, but it’s not tall enough to thwart those high-kickin’ birds from clogging up the sill.

Go taller 3-4-5", the little strip of wood shown in your pic is nothing.

 

[mpemburn]

If you add a board that won't allow the door to complete full travel. The reason ADOR doors work is the bottom of door is slotted allowing for bedding to push through. This door has a flat bottom.

It's a bit more involved but a sure fire remedy will be to cut the metal bottom of door out completely and allow for a gap. I'd not want 1/2 inch gap but think you need 1/4 inch to stop the problem. The wood below the door may already be close enough, if not cut it to fit a wood board as bottom sill that allows for a small gap bottom of door.

Thanks! I experimented with putting a section of rounded molding on the door sill today and discovered that is works pretty much as you say. There’s no slot at the bottom of ours, but it’s calibrated to stop when it reaches the sill. It went right back up when it hit the molding.

Given this, I changed the sensitivity setting until I could get it to close with a ponderable amount of chips in the way, still but retract when I put a “simulated chicken” (a corn broom) underneath. For reference, the current setting is 700.

 

[SteveE]

Its been a few months so I suppose you have this solved, but for anyone else with this problem I'll tack on an idea I had..... if simply making the door lip higher isn't and option.... and rebuilding a new door higher up off the floor isn't an option...... You could build a retaining wall for the litter, such that it sticks into the coop far enough that the birds could go through the door and hop up onto the retaining wall on the way in, and down off the wall on the way out.