The Great Chicken Door Debate - show us your chicken doors!

[hlhutchinson]

I like a the features on this one. Check out the link:

Nice

 

[Joe Gadget]

I'm rather fond of mine

 

[hlhutchinson]

I'm rather fond of mine

Nice looking coop

 

[Crazy for Chickens!]

Here is my chicken door. It has a wood piece with a handle on it that slides down into the meal pieces on either side. It hangs up inside on a nail.

Works pretty good except if there is really bad humidity, or it got wet repeatedly, then you kind of have to shove it.

 

[blackdog043]

I used a cutting board for the door and wall shelf brackets for the track, a bar goes through the track above the door so it can not be pried up and the door drops down behind the bottom board.

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[MTchicknman]

One of ours is like Lauralou's #2 sliding door - it's in a track and has a 10' rope pull to raise & lower it - the 'pulley' is made from an old fishing line spool & a couple of CD's to keep the rope on the spool, that was laying around here. A screw on the wall holds the rope in the open position during the day and it lets go so the door slides down at nite to close.
Another is a cabinet door out of an old camper that flops down and they walk and poop on it ..... I'll have to replace that one, but there's also a door on the outside - kinda the same idea as LynnP's - the outside one is held closed by the heavy ramp board to prevent the neighborhood cats from getting in. The coop is our old camper, which we pulled the frame off of and set the body on the ground. The frame will become our firewood trailer when I get time to finish it (after building more chicken pens :>( I can't win! ).
In the third pen, the chickens are too stupid to go inside at nite, so they just have a lean-to just in case, but the wife wants me to build them a real coop - bigger than before, which I don't think they deserve, since I built them a small coop and they wouldn't use it and stayed out in the rain instead! They're meat birds, so they will be in the freezer before too long anyways.

I'm a computer illiterate, so don't ask for pix, 'cause I wouldn't know how to put them on here ;>).

 

[NotSoChickenLove]

My coop door is just a chicken shaped hole! But it opens into a fully enclosed run that's a chicken wire covered walk-in greenhouse. The main door of the greenhouse is therefore their door, I suppose. It's a people door. The chickens can wander in and out of the coop night and day, but they can't leave the run unless someone lets them out. They're allowed to free range when someone is home to check on them regularly. There's plenty of room in the run, and things to leap up on, and I dump a load of greenery in before I go to work so they can faff about during the day.

 

[myfavoritechicken]

I had a ramp that hinged up to make a door. Decided to replace it with an automatic door so we could go on vacation. The door is 16"x32", so even using thin plywood, the door was heavier than the ChickenGuard allowed.

I mounted the door and controller as per instructions, and then added a counter-weight system that effectively reduces the weight of the door to 1 lb. Since the control box takes up the middle, I made a gambrel from an old scrap of PVC pipe. A line goes from there to two light-duty pulleys attached to the roof. A scrap of deck lumber serves as the counter-weight.

It works perfectly, although I might add a few more ounces of ballast to extend the life of the batteries.

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Very cool counterweight idea!

 

[trumpeting_angel]

Bump?

 

[msmeg26]

I compared Coop Tender to this one: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timothyluce/slick-chicktm-automatic-chicken-door-alexa-ios-and

And am going with the above ^^^