Dragonfly Farm
Chirping
- Aug 11, 2020
- 61
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I have a battery powered door and have it set to close after dark so no lady is left out in the cold. I also have a light on a timer inside the coop so as dusk approaches, the light turns on and stays on for a couple of hours. It goes on early in the morning, too, during the short winter days. Maybe you could rig a light up to shine on the solar panel to keep the door open longer? Honestly, what we do for these birds….(I’m still serving Beakie her smoothies 3xday…she turns 4 this year)My coop has the automatic Ladies First Chicken Door:
https://www.ladiesfirstchickendoor.com/products/
This thing is supposed to close when it starts to get dark, using it's solar panel to detect this. And it generally does a good job at this.
My problem is my hens never make it in before it closes. This is my first time with a flock so I don't know if something is wrong with the door or the chickens. I'll explain what is going on:
The door has a solar panel and detects when it starts to get dark and closes then. However it doesn't wait until night. It closes generally about when the sun is about a hand's breadth from the horizon. Though there are houses and trees in the way of this so it is hard for me to tell exactly. It isn't actually dark at this point though so the hens haven't though to actually go inside!
Do your hens start to go inside around then? Should they be going in before it gets actually dark? Are my chickens waiting out a stupidly long time? I've noticed that when they want to go inside it's generally dark enough in the coop that they sometimes don't make it all the way up onto the roost, choosing instead to roost on the raised lip of the poop board. Fortunately the lip of the poop board is a roost sized bit of wood and there are few enough of them that they don't poop on each other. But that indicates to me that maybe they're going to bed too late?
There are only 3 of them and they are only about 6 months old, they have had no older hens to teach them when to go to bed.
Does the door need fixing or do they need training?