Keeping chickens safe is tricky depending on how far you want to go in creating a chicken friendly safe environment. I’ve seen some pretty impressive chicken coops with attached enclosed runs with buried metal mesh and other fancy predator controls. Those are nice, but we have other projects that require that finite resource of money and time.
Having let the hens free range for a while and losing a few to predators – we ended up creating a large chicken run attached to the hen house. This worked for the most part but we did have the “owl incident” of 2019. Note – I had to delist the Youtube video linked in that post due to an inordinate amount of haters who thought we were intentionally trying to kill the chickens.
To solve that issue – we had to close the door every night and open it every morning. That works only as long as we are around and have to trust in luck that the owls aren’t around if we go somewhere or even forget one night.
Bridge read a tip that putting a tarp over the door confuses an owl and that did seem to work – we left the door open for several months and no issues. However, we know that at some point we may have problems with other predators.
We saw a Youtube video by some other homesteaders that installed the “Omlet Automatic Chicken Coop Door” (We are in no way affiliated with Omlet). Bridge ordered one and the thing is pretty cool.
The door is super easy to install, I think it took us 30 min since we didn’t need to alter the entry for the chickens. The control is powered by AA batteries and can be set to open/close manually, on a delay with a photocell, or at set times.
It comes with a variety of options with different attachment kits depending on where you are attaching the door. The chickens didn’t even really notice and have no problems getting in and out with the door.
Depending on your budget it can be a bit expensive at $189, but consider the loss of investment when an owl decides to prey on a few hens. Overall – we like it and feel it’s a great option to provide some safety.