I’ve been fascinated with automatic chicken coop doors.   My current auto coop door closer has been working like a champ for months.  I received a lot of great replies to that thread, and one of them was from a visitor named Bob.    I was so impressed with his design and pictures I asked him if I could post his comments and pictures as an article here.   I’m SUPER glad he agreed.   So, below are his words:

Here is the automatic door I built with an automatic car antenna (click the image to see it in action). I chose the antenna method because it has a built in stop when it reaches its end in both directions. This eliminates the need of more circuitry to control “run time”.

Mine runs off a little 12v lawn tractor battery. The battery is kept up to charge with a “float” charger. The door opens and closes with a photo light sensor. The reason for the battery is so that a power failure will not cause a problem. The reason for the light sensor is so that the length of daylight does not need to be constantly adjusted on a timer. BUT, you can simplify things and use an ordinary appliance timer plugged into an AC outlet, and then use a 12v DC power supply to power the antenna.

This is just one way to use an automatic car antenna. With some imagination you could probably come up with many more designs.
As you can see the antenna is mounted upside down. The door is made from an 1\8″ ALUMINUM panel. It is light in weight but very strong. The door channels are 1/4″. I have a 3″ spacer connected to the tip of the antenna to the door. You can measure the distance you need to determine the spacing length. I used a piece of aluminum stock and tapped each side to mount it. The side on the antenna tip has a hole for the tip to set in, and then I used the tapped hole as a “set screw” to keep the tip in place. I have my tip connected towards the bottom of the door. This makes the length of the door channel a bit shorter in order to match the up and down stroke of the antenna.

Be sure to carefully measure the lengths and travel distances needed for the antenna to move up and down freely. I have heard of some discussion that the travel distance does not need to be exact because the antenna’s “auto stop” feature will sense the end travel and the motor will time out. But that will be up to you.

If you do not have some aluminum sheeting lying around, you can find some at Lowe’s or etc. Aluminum can be easily cut with your skill saw. Just make sure you have a carbide blade and wear safety goggles. Even some type of plastic sheet would work. Just keep it light and strong.

The door channels can be purchased also at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

The best price for the antenna was on-line at Beachaudio.com, but they may be out of stock. Just search the web for the least expensive “automatic antenna”. Mine was about $35.00. The antenna MUST only have three wires. (Beware of the non automatic antennas that require the user to “toggle” the antenna up and down manually). Two wires connect directly to your power source. The other wire that is not black or red, is the “up down” trigger. That is the wire that you connect to the timer or sensor circuit.

If you go with the 12V battery, the float charger can be bought at Harbor Freight Tools for under $10.00.

I have updated this article to mention that the there may be a better control system other than the night/daylight sensor that is described below. I have used this sensor for about a year. However, just recently I noticed that the control unit was sometimes “confused” in the mornings and would make the antenna move up and down erratically.  Not fun for the chickens. It was mainly due to setting the photocell too sensitive in order to stay open at night as long as possible. Please be sure to read the later posts regarding an Intermatic ST01C timer. This timer is very unique because it does not rely on household current to operate. It is also very unique because it has an “astronomical” feature which updates the internal clock when dusk and dawn occurs in your region. It is powered by a 2 year lithium battery. Below is the night/daylight photocell circuit, if you decide to want to experiment with it.

Here is the circuit.  Its pretty simple and self explanatory and would require someone that has done a little soldering in the past.

The only thing that is really not explained is the CDS photocell. One could try different types to see which works best. The one I ended up using was from a photocell variety package purchased from Radio Shack.

If you decide to go with the photocell circuit, the antenna’s power wires (red and black) must be always connected to the 12vdc power source and not be controlled by the photocell circuit.

A few thumbnails you can click on for the control box, door channel, battery / charger, photocell

On the other side of the box I have a little slider switch that makes the door close manually.

The tip spacer/connector will probably be the hardest part for a lot of people to figure out to. There plenty of ways to get that done. I had a piece of an aluminum rod that was solid. I drilled and tapped each side of it. There is a screw going through the outside of the door to one side of the rod. I drilled a hole in the rod for the antenna tip to sit in. The screw on that side of the rod is a set screw that keeps the tip in place.

(Rob Note:  A huge thanks to Bob for this great design, pics and wrtieup and for letting me post it on the site.   I know we are both looking forward to reading some of your comments!)

After years of thinking about this, and after 2 separate raccoon attacks I finally found some time to create a prototype / proof of concept of my auto chicken coop door closer.    You can read the details of the initial design here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/automatic-chicken-coop-door.php.   The most recent coon attack was 3 weeks ago when a gang of 4 coons came into the coop just an hour after sunset.   They were able to kill a hen and our only duck before I got out there to scare them away.

It is a terrible feeling knowing that if you had only gone out a few moments earlier that everybody would be fine.  It only takes a single night of forgetting, or not getting home in time to lock up the coop and an entire flock could be destroyed.

As stated in my original auto chicken coop door plans, I only needed a design that would close the door in case we forgot or couldn’t make it home in time.   We’ll still try to manually close the coop up, but this will give us the extra safety net we need to make sure everyone sleeps safe!

Here is the BETA Version 1.0 Open & Close

Here is how the auto coop door works:
(click on image for labels)

1. The digital timer (110 volt AC powered) triggers at a predetermined time (6:30 pm, 15 mins after sunset) and sends power for 1 minute through an AC to DC adapter (12v 200mA) which powers the car door lock actuator.
2. The actuator receives power and pulls, with a good amount of force, the pin which releases the door.
3. The door falls swiftly to the closed position and stops on a piece of rubber bike tire for cushioning.
4. A pivoting piece of wood with a reflector falls down.  This allows us to shine a flashlight from the house, about 150 feet away, to see if the door has closed without walking to the coop.
5. A spring loaded pin / latch falls and locks into place preventing any would be killers from lifting the door.
6. Resetting the system is simple:  Pull on the spring loaded pin while raising the door.  Hook the door onto the top release pin.

Here is a video of the auto coop door closing (narrated by my 5 year old Alana using a rotary timer):

Here are some notes and changes to the original plan:

The Actuator, Pin, & Brackets:
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the actuator has two holes that allowed for easy mounting onto my door.  It also has a nice swivel ring to which I could connect my pin.   The pin and brackets were just some old pieces I found around the house.  I wanted the left most bracket to push against the door hanger to ensure a clean release.  The bracket to the right is there to guide the pull pin and to make sure the pull pin didn’t fall with every release.
Cutting Power:
I was very concerned about the actuator motor burning out during the 1-3 minutes that power was being sent to it.  These aren’t designed to continue to run.  I had two ideas on how to solve this, either:  1) Install a limit switch at the bottom or the top of the unit to cut power once the door fell, or use relays or a circuit to provide power to the actuator just long enough to pull the pin.  

While staring at my design it hit me, “Everything is made out of metal… metal conducts electricity!”   I stuck my alligator clips to the bracket and to the pin and voila, once the door falls the circuit is broken and power is cut to the actuator!    To the right is a closeup of the bracket and the pin (click for a larger version).  You’ll see that the pin rests on the bottom hold of the bracket.  The weight of the door pulls the pin down to make firm contact with the bracket which ensures good current flow.

Securing The Chicken Door:
Gravity was really good at helping me drop the door into position, but not so good at keeping the door closed from prying little claws.  I needed a way to lock / latch the door into place once it fell.  I played around with the swivel latch in my original design, but couldn’t get it to work reliably with the thin door I was using.    I ended up with what I felt was a wonderful idea:   Have a pressure / spring loaded pin push against the door so when the door falls past it, it snaps into place.   After a few tests with a paper clip I upgraded to some heavier gauge wire and now nothing is lifting that door.   If two coons can work together, one of them somehow climbing up to pull on the pin while the other raises the door, then they deserve to get at my flock!

Flagging A Successful Close:
This was just for fun.   As long as I had all these chain reactions going on, I decided to add one more.   Our back door sits parallel to this auto coop door.   We’re far enough out that we’d have to walk outside of the house about 150 feet to see if the door successfully closed.   I added a piece of wood with a pre-drilled hole and a screw as a swivel point.   When the door is up, the block of wood with a reflector attached, points toward our door.  A quick shot with a flashlight shows bright red reflection and that the door is still open.   Once the door falls, so does the block of wood and reflector.   At that point the reflector is lying down and can’t be seen by our flashlight which means the door has successfully and completely closed!

Sunset Calculator & Setting Door Close Time:
I found a great tool to determine my sunset time on a calnedar.  I noticed that for 10/26 my sunset time was 6:17 pm.   Of course, it is still pretty light outside at sunset so I watched my girls.  Then all were in the coop by 6:23 pm so I set the door to close at 6:30 pm.   I’ll watch it again tonight, and if all is well, I expect that I’ll be able to maintain 15 minutes past “sunset” as my time to close the door.

Parts:

• Car door lock actuator:  a pair on ebay for $11 (included shipping).
• Digital Timer: $8.00.  You can get the cheapo rotary ones for $4
• AC Adapter: 12 volt, 200 mA.  I have tons of adapters lying around.  This one came from an old portable phone charging base.
• Pins, brackets, wood - All were around the house.  A bit of cutting, drilling and bending got me what I needed.

Next Steps:

• Slow down the door descent:   It doesn’t seem to really bother the girls when the door falls, but I’d like to have a slower fall just to be sure.
• Decide if the current design of cutting power by breaking the circuit is a good way to go.  I’d like to use a circuit that gives a quick 0.5 second shot of power.
• Make the system portable: I’m powering this with an extension cord from the house.  I’d like to find a way to make everything battery powered.  Potentially using a cheap battery powered alarm clock, some relays, and a circuit or two.  One issue is if I call charge something like a capacitor from batteries to shoot enough current into the actuator to do its job.
• Clean everything up:  It would be cool to resolve all the bullet points above and create a self contained, battery powered, easy to mount and easy to set auto chicken coop door closer!

I’m anxious to hear your thoughts and suggestions on this design.   So far I’ve been watching it work for 3 days and I’m pretty happy with it!    What do you think?   What would you change or add to the design?

UPDATE 11/7/08 – Wow, this thing is working like a CHAMP!  It is such a good feeling to not have to always be wondering “Did we remember to lock up the chickens!?!?”    Also, it really helps out at times like tonight:  We went out for a date night with another couple before sunset.   We stayed out for a few hours past dark and didn’t worry one bit about our girl’s safety!    Woot!

There’s a great discussion at http://www.backyardchickens.com/ about improving this design and some really great ideas about a new design using linear actuators and circuits!  Check it out: http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=99668

UPDATE 12/11/08 – You know how people say something / someone was a “life saver”?  Well, I wanted to let everyone know that this simple auto coop door closing system has literally been a life saver for my remaining hens!

Last night we didn’t get out to the coop until late.   When I opened the door to go outside I heard scurrying from 2 directions and then I saw them… 1 coon up in a tree and 2 over in the bushes (the 3 remaining ones from the group of 4 that killed our duck and hen a month ago).    I’m almost certain our whole flock would have been dead had the auto door not done its job.

UPDATE 8/11/09 – I’ve had a couple times over the last few months where I found the coop open in the morning (i.e., it didn’t close the night before).   For details see:  Pin didn’t pull and door didn’t fall

Bottom line:   Automated door closers are fantastic!  I know ours has saved our hens on multiple occasions, but be careful not to get a false sense of 100% security.

I’ve been wanting to design an automatic chicken coop door closer for years.   There are plenty of other systems out there that automatically open and close the coop door, but they are expensive and, well, not designed by me! 

Basically my idea is to create a simple system that is a “safety net” in case we don’t remember to lock our girls in at night.  I have no problems letting the girls out in the morning, but I want to ensure they are closed up safe in the evening.   I learned my lesson the hard way one night when I got home late from a party and a coon had killed my favorite hen.

Some have commented ”What if all the girls don’t get in the coop in time, or get caught in the guillotine door as it closes?”   My response: I don’t think I’ve ever found my girls outside of the coop when it is dark.   For my auto coop door I’d set the timer to go off an hour after dark to ensure they are all in.  Remember, my design is more of a fail-safe than a system to 100% rely on, I don’t know if any auto system is.

I’m always worried that I’ll forget to lock up the girls, this auto close system at least give me some insurance just in case we forget.   If it works really well then you only need to check in occasionally to verify the girls are always getting in and that the door is closing properly and at the right time.

In my opinion, I’d rather risk loosing one hen that didn’t get into the coop in time instead of loosing all my girls because I forgot to lock them up.

The Design:

My first auto coop door design called for an electromagnet holding the door open.  At night I’d cut the power and the door would fall.  I found problems very quickly with this design, mostly heat, energy loss, etc.   I then moved to a different electromagnet, a type of ”pull solenoid” to pull a pin to release the door.   There were problems with that design too, it required too much power to move a solenoid strong enough to pull a pin.

So far, the best thing I’ve played with is a car lock actuator I bought on ebay ($11 shipped for two).   My basic design is simple,  I’m thinking about using only three parts:

1. A $5 wall adapter
2. A $5 lamp timer
3. A $5 car lock actuator

Below is a sketch of the design.   Here is how it works:

At night the timer hits the pre-set ”on” time and sends power through the adapter and turns on the actuator
The actuator pulls a pin which releases the coop door
The door falls and covers up the coop access
The “door latch” (in red) is an “L” shaped piece of metal with a pin in the top which allows it to swing.  Once the door passes the bottom of the latch it swings to the right (gravity wants to center the metal) and the latch locks the door into place.

In the morning I simply move the latch to the left, raise the door, and hook the pin.

My biggest problem with this design is this:

The shortest amount of time I can set on this type of timer is 30 minutes.  This would mean the actuator would be trying to “run” for the whole 30 minutes and would probably burn out the tiny geared motor.  The resolutions to this could be:

• A digital lamp timer that allows you to set much smaller increments of time.  I think as low as 1 minute of “on”.
• Create a switch activated by the door, so either it powers the actuator when the door is up, or cuts power to the actuator when it falls.

I should also mention that my situation is a bit different than most because my girls have a small run they can access during the day.  The coop door I’ll be opening is actually the door that goes from this small chicken run out to the open backyard.  Opening the door to “the great outside” is the one I want to automatically close.

So, what do you think of this design?  What would you add or change?   I’d love some feedback, especially from the engineering / tinkering types that read this website!!!

Update, 5/7/06:   Alison sent me some great pics of her simple but effective technique (click for larger)

Update 10/27/08: I Finally have a prototype!!!  Automatic Chicken Coop Door Closer

When my wife and I were thinking about getting chickens one of our concerns was how difficult it would be to care for them. I’ve got friends who completely “baby” their chickens (e.g. chicken diapers, baths, cleaning their watering dishes daily with bleach, etc.). I’ve also got friends who barely even deal with their chickens other than to make sure they’ve got some food and some water (no matter how dirty). I wanted to find a good balance between these two extremes, between fanatical and neglect.

One of the big “chicken care” questions was regarding food and water. I wanted to automate this process as much as possible.

WATER:
I looked into quite a few different solutions for getting water for my girls. One of those was to setup a nipple watering system. The pro’s of this system were:
1) They wasted less water.
2) They took up less floor space.
3) They didn’t fill up with dirt, feathers, leaves, shavings, etc.

The biggest cons of this system were going to be setting it up and training my girls how to use it. After buying a few of these nipples and testing them I decided I’d try something else.

I saw some automatic poultry watering systems at the feed store but they were pretty expensive. I found something at Wal-Mart that works just as well and have been VERY happy with it. It is a “Never Dry Auto-Wata” system for dogs. It was only $12.78.

FOOD:

NOTE:  This feeder (dubbed Frankenfeeder) is the perfect example of function over form.  It worked great in all of it’s hideous glory!  Below is an update with the new homemade chicken feeder I’m currently using (a bit better looking, more functional, larger capacity).

I saw a lot of different feeding systems and couldn’t decide what to do. I had a few extra mason jar feeders and thought I’d attempt a modification to one of them. If it didn’t work then I’d go out and buy something.

I took the mason jar feeding attachment and a small plastic peanut butter jar that was the same size as a mason jar. I cut the bottom off of the jar and attached a bigger peanut butter jar to the smaller one. I cut out the bottom of that one and took a long piece of A/C conduit and funneled the end a little to fit into the larger peanut butter jar. I then cut out the bottom of a big plastic container and attached it to the top of the conduit. Finally I cut some holes into the conduit and plastic container and threaded through some wire. This wire would support the majority of the weight of the feeder and take pressure off of the jars. I really like this feeder because it was cheap, takes up very little floor space, is easy to refill, holds a lot of feed, and oh yeah… it was cheap! I haven’t kept excellent track, but it seems that I only need to refill this feeder about 1-2 times a month. To the right is the finished product. It isn’t pretty, but is works GREAT!!!

Another idea I had was to add a tin pie plate nailed to a piece of wood that would catch the food as it is “billed out” by the girls. This keeps a substantial amount of food off the ground and from being wasted. The wood and the nails also help keep the feeder in place and from falling off of the cement block it is resting on. Below is a closer look

Additional Notes:

• My chickens spend most of their day free ranging in a large section of the back yard.
• The automated water system is outside of the coop / run.

• I’ve got the feeder in the chicken run with a gallon waterer. I need to refill this waterer about every two weeks.

• I feed my chickens old wheat from food storage and day old bread I get for free from the local supermarket. I also give them piles of worms and bugs from my compost bin. I haven’t noticed any decrease in egg size, frequency, or quality, but I have noticed a HUGE drop in the amount of feed I have to supply. This is wonderful since chicken feed in the city is about $14 for a 50 lb. bag.

• I decided to do a test and didn’t give my girls any bread, wheat, worms and they weren’t let out of the run as much. They went through the whole feeder full of layer pellets in about a week!

UPDATE 9/15/07
I finally upgraded my “temporary” feeder so something a lot bigger and hopefully a bit nicer looking.  You can read all the details here:  HomeMade Chicken Feeder

UPDATE 12/2/09
My system has been working great for years.  There were only two problems I’ve had:

1. Waterer: The white supply hose going to the auto chicken waterer split open and gave our yard a good soak.  I’m not sure if it was a weak spot because of a kink or if maybe a thirsty rat wanted a drink.   A $2.75 hose mender and 10 minutes later everything was fine.
2. Feeder: During a really bad storm some sideways rain got into my wood feeder… what a mess!  I took the whole thing apart, scrubbed it out with bleach, let it dry really well and painted it all over an put it back together.  Of course I also made sure that there would be no way water could get at the feeder again!

Please visit my site http://www.backyardchickens.com/ for a ton of great info on raising chickens.

Also, register with our 5,000 member community of chicken addicts: www.backyardchickens.com/forum/

5/24/05
An hour ago my wife and I decided to go outside to see how our girl was doing. I was horrified to see a broken egg in front of the nest. It looked like something had torn its way into the egg… but wait a minute, maybe I’m wrong. I gently lifted up my hen and to our amazement we saw two tiny little puff balls hiding under their mom’s wing. Upon even closer inspection we saw another VERY new chick that was still very wet all curled up in a ball.

Our best guess is that the top two yellow chicks are the Black Tailed White Japanese (from two small eggs I found).Since there are two more small eggs that haven’t hatched I’m guessing the fuzzy thing towards the bottom of the screen is one of the Leghorn / Welsummer chicks.It’s a good thing that I decided to candle the eggs last night instead of tonight and that I made all the changes I did to the coop and ramp yesterday. It is amazing to think that just 20 hours ago we were holding these in our hands as little eggs and looking inside!

Alana welcoming her new baby “chick chick” into the world with a kiss

5/25/05
This morning we looked and unfortunately one of the chicks didn’t make it. We think it was the one that was all curled up in the picture above. I looked about 1 minute ago and I saw 4 very vibrant chicks, one sleepy, still slightly damp chick, and one that just came out of the egg. If those last two make it then we’ll have 6 chicks! Crazy to think that we just doubled our flock. Here are all six (can you see the tiny new one on the right?):

5/25/05
More bad news: We checked and the little one to the far right of the picture above didn’t make it. So far it seems that we only have one of the leghorn / welsummer crosses left. We hope it’s a girl. Here is a post mortem picture of the two chicks. One still has the “sack” attached. It is so sad to think that they made it all the way to breaking free of the egg and then died. If we lost them while still in the egg it wouldn’t have been so sad.

On the bright side we still have some very cute little chicks. Check out these pictures:

626/05
A really quick update.  I’ve found 5 eggs the past 3 days, so either a few girls are doing double duty or my Buff Orpington mother is laying again!

Updates on the way..

Back to page 1
Back to page 2

5/4/05
She’s still in the nest this morning.  Chel told me that the eggs, even if they are a few days old, won’t start to develop until they have a hen sitting on them.  This is good because we are going on a little trip and don’t want to miss the big day!  

I heard quite a bit of clucking this morning and opened the window to see all my girls waiting for the buff to get out so they could lay their eggs.   Last night I put a few of their own eggs into the top nest and the new nest to encourage them to lay elsewhere, but it looks, and sounds like they aren’t interested.

5/4/05 (later)
I guess the girls gave up waiting for her.  I’m pretty sure they all laid in the “new” nest.  I wish I could swap the buff into the “new” box to let the other girls use the “main box” since it is much easier for me to retrieve the eggs.

In the middle of the day I saw the buff out and about getting some food and water and doing a bit of stretching and foraging.  I’m so nervous that she’s going to abandon the eggs, but fortunately she was back on the nest after being off for only about 30 mins. 

NOTE: One thing I noticed is that I didn’t have a “lip” on the front of the new nest box so the eggs had a tendency to be pushed out when the chickens went in and out and sat down.   I wonder if this is why my buff didn’t want to stay in there with the eggs?   I’ve added a board to the front to prevent rolling and I’m wondering if I should try to move the buff and eggs again.

5/5/05
Today my little hen got off the nest for about an hour at 3:00 pm. I took the opportunity to see what was going on. First I noticed that there were 4 brown eggs alongside the white fertilized ones. I guess this means the other girls aren’t interested in laying in the other nest. I took two of the eggs inside to “candle” them. Click here my first candling egg experience and egg candling log / pictures.

5/15/05
Good news, all the other girls have been using the “new” box I made and are leaving my buff hen alone. I leave a golf ball and a single egg in there to encourage them to keep laying in that box. I also added a video of a candled egg today, see here:

5/17/05
I realized I’ve got two issues:
1) My nest box is about 4 feet off the ground and I’m concerned that the chicks may venture out early on and fall off of the ramp that goes from the coop to the run.
2) I completely forgot that my buddy lost a few of his chicks to some mysterious animals. Probably owls and/or hawks, maybe even crows, coons, etc. I’m debating if I take a chance and let nature take its course, or lock them all up when I’m not around.

5/23/05
I think I resolved the first issue and also resolved keeping the chicks food separate from the hen’s food. First I added some sides to the ramp to discourage chicks from falling off the ramp. I also stuck a piece of wood in the coop as a partition. It isn’t high, but it is high enough to keep the chicks contained for the first few days. I doubt the older girls will want to go over the board, but if they do it won’t be a big problem. Here is a picture of the partition and a picture of the proud mom:

<<—Back to page 1 — Continue to page 3—>>

Picked up our first 5 chicks from a friend. They are half RIR and half Australorp and are 3 weeks old. Hens or Roosters… we just don’t know. Here is a picture of the parent chicks and Alana with the chicks (she’s so happy).

A video of Alana sharing her Cheerios with the chicks
(notice she bites them in half first)

FRIDAY 1/7/05

After a lot of debate and checking we decided to let go of 4 of our 5 chicks. The 4 that left just seemed to really look like roosters and so we decided not to risk it. It was a sad goodbye, but a very nice man came to pick up our “roos”. We were a little hesitant not knowing if they were really roos or not, especially since they were so very friendly and nice. In the end we decided we’d be better off with more variety of breeds and with ones we were sure were hens.

NEW CHICKENS!!!
After a few weeks with just one chick we finally found her some new friends! Here are the highlights.

SUNDAY 1/23/05

• LenLeo sent 3 beautiful adult roos down to eggchel (1 for eggchel, 2 for wolfey).

• eggchel brought those birds up with 4 chicks of her own along (all 4 for wolfey) with a pretty black silkie / cochin mix named Elvis for us! Oh, she also brought us about 3 dozen duck and chicken eggs of various sizes and colors.
• We introduced Elvis to our young australorp RIR mix and after a bit of pecking they became friends.
• Talked to two neighbors who each wanted us to pick up some chickens for them.

MONDAY 1/24/05

• Drove out to wolfey’s, chatted, looked at some birds, chatted, picked out 10 birds that we thought looked good, chatted, learned how to clip wings, and then chatted!

• Drove home and called the neighbors.
• First neighbor came by and grabbed 3 chickens
• Second neighbor came by and picked up 3 more hens.

After a lot of discussion between the wife and I we decided to let Elvis go to the second neighbor’s house. They have older kids that would appreciate Elvis more than we would right now.

Well, we’re now “down” to 5 chickens as follows (from Left to Right):

• Pure breed Rhode Island Red
• Pure breed Buff Orpington
• Mix… maybe a Golden Laced Wyandotte and ??
• Mix? maybe a Silver Laced Wyandotte and ??
• Our little girl we’ve had from the beginning. She’s half Black Australorp and half Rhode Island Red

Thursday 1/27/05
After a few days everyone seems to be doing very well. All the fears I had about our little blackie getting pecked to death were thankfully NOT validated! While she is at the bottom of the pecking order she’s not getting harassed too much. The order seems to be playing out as follows:
• Golden Laced
• RIR
• Silver Laced
• Buff Orpington
• Blackie

The first two seem neck in neck for head hen while buff and blackie are the youngest and always get pushed around.

We’ve tried to get these hens to start getting used to us by throwing food to them and dropping it closer and closer to us. I’m glad to report that today I got all 5 hens to pick a piece of bread from my hand. I couldn’t have done it without blackie. She’s already so used to us that she has no problems eating out of our hands. She quickly ran over and started munching away and was really enjoying the fact that the other 4 hens were still to scared to approach, so no fighting over her food. Well, that was until the other 4 hens wanted to know what was going on. RIR was the first to be brave and came over to start pecking away at the food in my hand. The others, while not as bold as Red did come over and take a quick nibble and ran off.

Friday 2/04/05
I went outside at about 1:15 and heard some scratching sounds coming from the coop. I noticed all of the chickens outside except the RIR. I slowly opened the coop door to see her sitting there in the bottom nest box. She shuffled around and I didn’t see an egg, but I figured that her odd behavior (being inside while everyone else is outside and all the scratching) was a sign that an egg was on its way. I came back about a half hour later and she was outside. I quickly opened the coop to find a cute little brown egg sitting there all by itself. I was so happy. I don’t know if I should bronze it or what!

It has some little reddish brown speckles and splotches on it, but I figure this is normal. Is it blood, or something else?

Sunday 2/06/05
I was waking up and heard the “song” that I was told a chicken would sing after laying an egg. I went outside expecting to see an egg, but instead I found TWO!!

One was pretty warm (must have been very recent) and the other was pretty cold… maybe even from last night / yesterday? I wish I knew who laid them. I know it was two chickens, but don’t know if it was the RIR again, or the two others.

I’m like an egg factory over here.

2/08/05
3 (THREE) eggs today! One from each hen old enough to lay! So, that means:

2/4: First egg
2/5: no egg
2/6: 2 eggs
2/7: 2 eggs
2/8: 3 (THREE) eggs!

2/20/05
We’re averaging about 2.75 eggs a day from our 3 girls! Check this out:

4/03/05
I went out for the daily egg check and to my surprise I found 4 eggs today.  The wife and I noticed that the Buff’s comb and waddle were getting a bit more red, and she’s just the right age to start laying.

Here’s a picture, can you guess which one is hers?

5/01/05
This morning I went outside to let the girls out of their run.  After a few moments they all went back into the hen house and were looking at the nest box.  Note that I said “all”.  Even our young little black hen was checking things out.   I wondered if today could be the day.  After a few of the other girls came and went from the nest box the little black hen went inside.  After the buff went in and finished, this is what I found.  Notice how long the black hen’s egg is.  Almost reminds me of a duck egg.05/05/05
My buff orpington hen is broody, so I’m going to try to hatch some eggs! Click HERE for the whole story! Click HERE for my egg candling experience.Click HERE for my chicken picture gallery

And remember to visit http://www.BackYardChickens.com!

Recently one of my chickens went broody. You can see the story here. I decided to put my egg candling experience on a separate page, so here it is!

Here are the eggs I’m candling:

5/6/05
I’ve had the eggs since 5/4/05. We’re not sure how old they were when they arrived, but we were told that they wouldn’t really start developing until a hen was sitting on them which was two days ago.

Here is how I’m candling the eggs: I take my super high powered LED flashlight and cup my hand to make a tunnel for the light to pass through. I put the flashlight against one side and the egg against the other. It is quick and easy. Below is Alana showing me where the egg is suppose to be:

I’ve never done this before so I wanted to candle a store bought egg to use as my egg candling benchmark.

Here Is my Egg Log. Remember, I’m not exactly sure how old these eggs are, so I’m going to say that Thursday, 5/4 is Day 1 (the first day she was on the eggs all day).

My camera started to have a very hard time focusing on the eggs after day 3 so all the pictures came out too fuzzy to post. If / when we ever do this again I’ll be sure to use a better camera and take some better pictures

5/8/05
Today is Mother’s Day! What a great day to candle eggs and see if my hen is going to be a mother. I candled all of the 7 eggs. The three big eggs seem to all have well formed webs of veins. The 4 smaller eggs didn’t seem as developed, but all of them had what looked like developing chicks. We actually saw a tiny little beating heart in one of the large eggs. I tried to take a video, but it didn’t really come out very well. I’ve been reading that some people don’t like to handle the eggs too much, so I’m not sure if I’ll continue to candle every day. Curiosity may get the best of me though.

Here is a pic of one of the tiny eggs:

Oh, today at church a friend (the one who gave us our original chicks) mentioned that one of his hens was broody and sitting on some eggs. One of the eggs exploded under her (eggs get bacteria in them which grows and builds gass / pressure) and so they discarded all the other eggs. They went to the feed store, picked up some chicks and put them under her. She didn’t miss a beat and raised them as her own. If things don’t work out with our chicks maybe this will be a good option for us.

5/15/05
I took out all the eggs again and carefully candled all of them with my wife. Good news: we verified that all 7 eggs have moving little chicks inside. So far so good! One of the smaller eggs had an embryo that was moving so much that we decided to take a video. See the video below of the chick moving around. Look closely and you can probably see some little feet kicking!

5/18/05
I tried to candle three eggs yesterday and I didn’t see a fraction of the movement as I had in the videos. I’m hoping it is because it is getting too crowded in the egg to do the chickie boogie and not that they are sickly / quitting. It did seem that I saw more of a chick silhouette in the egg which is pretty cool. Another thing I noticed was “floaties” in the egg. Pieces of something that was floating / sinking independent of anything else. I wonder if this is normal.

5/23/05
We pulled out all the eggs tonight to candle them. It is probably the last time we will candle them since they will be hatching in a few days or so. The eggs were VERY dark except for the air pockets at the big end of the eggs. A few of the eggs looked as though a little bump was protruding from the dark mass into the air pocket. We looked closely for movement in each egg, but it was hard because they were so dark. For the most part every egg seemed to have at least a little bit of movement. One egg was especially dark and as I was rolling it to look for movement my wife pointed out a tiny little crack that looked like an X on the egg. This is so exciting!

For the rest of the story go HERE!

Please visit my site http://www.backyardchickens.com/ for a ton of great info on raising chickens.

Also, register with our 45,000 member community of chicken addicts: www.backyardchickens.com/forum/

5/3/05
A lot has been happening over the past few days. First I got an email two days ago from the guy who took my 4 original chicks. He said they all turned out as roosters. Here’s a picture and here’s the story.

Also, yesterday my young black hen laid her first egg.. it looked almost like a duck egg, big and elongated. Look at the bottom of this page

But, the biggest news is that my Buff Orpington started to go broody. My first thought was to “break” her of the broodiness, but then I thought I could get some fertile eggs and stick them under her (I don’t have a rooster).

I’ve only noticed the broodiness the last few days. She was in the box for a few hours the first day and I reached in to get her she puffed up. I pulled her out and set her on the ground. She just plopped on the ground like a chicken bean bag, almost like she didn’t have any bones in her body. I’ve since learned that chickens get in a “trance” when they are broody. She shortly “woke up” and remained outside the coop the rest of the day as she normally would. That night I noticed that she didn’t go up on the roost, she just stayed on the floor of the coop, but not in the nest box. The next day I saw her sitting in the nest box again and waited for about 3 hours. I pulled her out of the box and again she puffed up when I got close and when I pulled her out she just plopped on the ground. Fortunately she didn’t growl at me or peck as I’ve heard chickens do.

That night she went into the nest box and stayed in the nest all night and was still there in the morning. She was in the only nest that they all use to lay eggs. I heard that the other hens often just lay their eggs next to the broody hen.

I decided it was time to contact an expert, my friend Chel (a Bay Area friend whom I had met on another chicken website). She gave me some great info and a super offer! Here’s what she said:

“Yes, you should definitely put some fertile eggs under that buffy if she is broody. What fun it would be for Alana to see the mommie leading her little chickies around and clucking to them. Be sure to mark the fertile eggs or get some of different colors than your other girls eggs so that you can remove fresh eggs laid in the broody’s nest. You can get fertile eggs from me or Wolfey, Im sure. I could give you some darker brown (welsummer and maran) and some blue/green and some smaller bantam eggs so that you could tell the fresh from the fertile. I’ll be coming your way in a few days and could drop them off unless you are coming over here.”

What a super offer from a great person. I gave her a call and we worked out the details. My wife was set on trying to get a white chicken so we asked Chel what she thought and she made some good recommendations.

5/4/05 Chel stopped by with her daughter and brought us 7 eggs of the following: 3 eggs from a Leghorn hen and a Welsummer rooster 3 eggs from a Black Tailed White Japanese hen and rooster 1 egg that is a “mystery egg”

I promptly went outside to start getting things ready. I thought I’d build a new nest box and put the eggs and the buff orpington in there. That would allow the other hens to lay their eggs in the usual spot. I cleaned out the whole coop, put in a new plywood floor with new shavings and made a new nest box out of a milk crate. I put some old cut-up jeans over the crate to give her some privacy and gently placed the eggs inside.

I pulled the Buff out of the nest box and set her on the eggs. She seemed pretty happy, SUCESS!!! or so I thought. I came back about an hour later and saw her outside walking around with the other girls. I guessed she may not be ready to be a mother. Fortunately when I came back an hour later she was on the eggs. SUCCESS!!! well, wrong again. Another hour later I checked and she wasn’t on the eggs, but had moved to the other nest box where there were no eggs. I decided not to fight her anymore so I decided I’d move the eggs to where she wanted to be. Here’s the funny part. Every one of the other 5 times I moved her I used gloves because I had heard that hens can peck pretty good when they are broody. Each of those times she never pecked, only fluffed up her feathers. I thought, “She’s never pecked me before, why would she this time? I don’t need gloves.” Well, I’m getting good at being wrong, and I got a good peck. I grabbed the gloves, shifted her off the nest, moved the eggs from the new nest and put them in the old nest then shifted her back on the eggs.

CONTINUE TO PAGE 2

(Here are our NEW CHICKENS! Click here for the whole story! )

Step 1:
First thing I did was to design my coop. I looked at a ton of great examples and took the ideas I liked best. Here are some of the plans if you are interested: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/gallery/coop

Step 2:
Start framing the main part of the chicken coop (hen house).

Step 3:
Build the chicken run and “frame” that the hen house will sit on / into.

Step 4:
Finish framing the hen house and add the siding to the sides that won’t be accessible once on the frame:

Step 5:
Finish adding the siding, add the floor (temporary 1×9 slats until I finish the hinged floor), add the doors (two pieces of plywood) and the roof (corrugated metal sheets)

Step 6:
Add the door locks (gate latch and homemade latch). The gate latch holds both sides closed when latched. The top homemade latch secures both doors VERY tightly, but when it is in the open position it allows both doors to open.

Step 7:
Add a guillotine style door to section off the house from the run. I created a frame that the door would slide in. Here are the pics of the door open and closed. See the string that goes to a handle that allows me to open and close the door from the front of the house. Also build the world’s most ghetto feeder (made from two different sized plastic peanut butter jars, a large plastic jar, some A/C conduit, and the chick feeder… oh, and LOTS of duct tape! This thing is ugly, but works BEAUTIFULLY!

Step 8:
Add a ramp for the chicks to go from the run to the house easily. In this picture you can see the frame I built for the door to slide in.

Here are all the happy campers… er… um chickens!

Stuff I have to build:

• Outside nest boxes

• Permanent roosts

• Droppings tray

• Hinged floor in the coop for easy cleaning

• Rebuild roof over the run for better water drainage.

UPDATES:

1/23/04
I decided to keep the nest boxes inside. I was afraid that after going to the trouble of building the boxes externally that the chickens wouldn’t use them (too high, too low, etc.) Instead I built the following two story box. This will allow them to be low or high and I can remove it if necessary. I also added a new all natural roost!

1/23/04
Here are our NEW CHICKENS! Click here for the whole story!

UPDATE 9/13/09:

Somebody on BYC asked that people show their eye sore chicken coops and I reluctantly posted mine.  This one was built out of scrap wood on hand and meant to be a temporary coop until I built my DREAM coop.  Well, that was 5 years ago!

My problem are:

1)  It “functions” fine… it’s just as ugly as all get out.
2)  With all the new chicken coop designs posted on BYC I get more and more ideas of what my coop should look like and do.   I want it to be perfect in every way, so I become paralyzed and don’t do anything.
3)  I could just buy a great looking coop or pay someone to build it, but I really want the satisfaction of doing it myself.

Some day I will build the perfect coop… some day!!!

To see over 300 chicken coops that are way better than mine, visit my site http://www.backyardchickens.com/coopdesigns.html.

You can also ask coop questions in the chicken coop section of the forum.