Automatic Chicken Coop Door

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EngineeringChick

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Hi y'all,

My name is Zoe and I am a second year engineering student. For our Design class, we have been tasked with creating an automatic chicken coop door that would open in the morning to let the chickens out and close at night once the chickens are back inside the coop. We are also planning on attaching a temperature and water sensor that would detect if it's too cold or raining so the door would not open under those conditions as well. As part of our research, we just have a couple of questions that we would like to ask you about this potential product.

1) Would an automatic chicken coop door be of any interest to you?
2) If so, how much would you be willing to pay for it? (Less than 100$, between $100-$200, or over $200)
3) If you already have a chicken coop door, are there any issues with it that you would like to be resolved?
4) Would you rather have a door that runs on solar/battery power or electric power? Would you willing to pay extra for the solar panels?
5) Should the door open on the side or from above?
6) Should a sensor be added on the door to count how many chickens have entered the coop and only close once all the chickens have re-entered the coop or are there usually not many stragglers come night time?
7) What would you consider a good sized chicken coop door? 1ft x 1ft or slightly larger or smaller?

Thanks ahead of time for helping out with our project!
 
Hello Zoe and welcome to the forum. I don't have automatic coop doors on any of our coops (10) because of the cost and also reliability issues. Our coop doors are heavy to prevent predators lifting them and so don't need locking. Side sliding doors are not secure and external lifting doors are not much better. There are stragglers at night and you need to make sure they are not locked out, but if one has been taken you can't leave the door open all night so counting would be difficult. In our case many go in and out several times before settling. Our doors vary on the size of chickens but the largest is 400 high x 300 wide.
 
Hi Zoe, and welcome from me, too.
Like Chris, I don't use (and would have no use for) an automatic pophole, but for a different reason - my coop is free standing in a large and very secure run, and the door opening faces towards a sheltered corner, so I never close the pophole. This contributes to excellent ventilation in the coop, which helps prevent respiratory diseases and condensation.
However, I would advise against aspects of design which could leave the chickens shut in on cold or wet mornings. Particularly in winter, when they've gone to roost by 4.00p.m. and don't get up until its about 8a.m., they have a period of up to 16 hours with no food or water, and really need to get out, eat and drink, as soon as its light enough for them to see and be safe from predators. Chickens stand cold well, they are much more sensitive to heat, and have waterproof feathers so getting wet doesn't bother them. A well-designed chicken run will have a dry, roofed area where the food is kept, in order to keep their pellets dry so they don't go mouldy, and the birds will make for there when they emerge in the morning.
 
Hi Zoe, & welcome.

I'd second what Marigold has said with regard to the need for the door to open in the morning regardless of weather and temperature.
To answer your questions in order,

1) Yes; I would never have got hens had it not been for automatic door openers / closers, as it means that my girls get let out at dawn when either I'm still in bed (in the summer) or I've gone out (in the winter) & likewise they get shut in at night when I might still be out.

2) Under $100 would be good, but reliability is more important than price. If the door doesn't open because of reliability issues & I've gone away for a long weekend, the hens will die of dehydration because they won't be able to get to their drinker.

3) I have a VSBb. The only time I've had a problem, it was down to a failure, we think, of the light sensor. Fortunately I was home at the time & was able to let the girls out manually. The supplier replaced the circuit board pretty quickly. So again, the main issues are RELIABILITY, RELIABILITY & RELIABILITY. One other issue is that current door openers only seem to work on doors that open in a vertical plane. If you could design one to open and close doors on coops whose doors open horizontally, you could steal a big chunk of the market. I had to choose a coop that would work with the current door openers; this ruled out a large range of coops.
Likewise, other coops have doors which fold down forwards to form an entrance / exit ramp. I don't know of any openers which work with these either, so there's another opportunity for you.

4) My VSB runs on batteries. Mains electricity isn't an option due to
a) distance between the coop & the house and
b) power cuts in bad weather; the hens need to be able to get out regardless of whether I'm cooking by candlelight.
I'm not sure about solar panels; it would depend on reliability and cost.

5) Where the door opens from will depend on the design of the coop. I'd suggest that you have a good look at the range of coops on the market, & design something to fit the coops whose doors don't open vertically, so that you're not competing with the established manufacturers.

6) No, I wouldn't add a sensor to count the hens in & out, for the reasons given by Chris. If the door is set to shut just after dusk, my hens have generally gone to bed on time. If they dally & get shut out for the night, they go to bed earlier the next night! (Though they are in a fox-resistant run, so they're still safe.)

7) My door is a little smaller than this, but then I don't keep huge hens. If you were keeping brahmas, I guess you'd need a larger door, as they're BIG birds. Bantams on the other hand can be pretty small. My girls are somewhere in between, & not having cockerels, I don't have to allow room for tall combs.

You might want to have a look at this; http://www.flytesofancy.co.uk/chickenhouses/Auto_Chicken_House_Door_Opener.html
as Flyte So Fancy, whilst not the cheapest, have some of the best documentation on the internet for the VSB door openers!

Good luck with your project, & don't forget to come back & let us know how you've got on. :-)17
 
I'd kind of like one purely because I'm a bit of a gadget freak.

I'll have nothing to do with these crazy $ of which you speak, I'll only buy one in £.

And it has to be sub £100.

My coop has a door, its on a rope that lifts up to the outside of the run with a hook outside and a small counterweight - so I don't have to enter the run in the morning to open or to close in the evening. We do shut ours in when the weather is cold - the house isn't drafty and its in a sheltered corner, but I think its just a little more cosy in there in winter with the door shut.

It would absolutely have to be solar or otherwise free from mains electricity - and I take issue with the idea that solar would be much more expensive, we're not looking at a high power application. Can't immediately work out why it couldn't be far more elegantly done in clockwork and merely wound daily.

Only shut from above.

Can't see any need for a hen counter. So long as it shuts when its dark they'll all be in bed.

Size of chicken coop door rather depends on the size of your chickens. Chris gave some dimensions in mm which ought to get any hen home - you'll note they're in mm not ft. From $ and ft I take it you're on the other side of the pond?
 
Have you thought of any built-in compensation for the fact that daylight alters between 3-5 minutes a day, depending on the time of year? I would imagine that having to reset the works at least once a week could be a bit of a bind, and if neglected could result in the pophole shutting much too early when the evenings began to draw out, and also staying shut longer than necessary as dawn got earlier.
 
Indeed, the VSBs can be operated either by a timer, in which case you need to keep adjusting it as the days lengthen & shorten, or by means of a light sensor (which is what I have), in which case the door opens & closes at a preset light level which you can vary by means of an adjusting potentiometer (I guess that's what it is...).
 
Hi Zoe,
good luck with the project.
I am new to chicken keeping and decided not to get an automatic opener as they are expensive and a luxury when you have the cost of the coop and other set up costs to cover. I think cost would be an important aspect but as others have said anything you build must be reliable as the birds need to be safe at night and be able to access their water and food in the morning.
My girls are in a fox proof run on an old concrete shed base and I did leave the pop hole open all night in the summer. The only problem was one mornng when they got up at about 5am to find the fox was still up and staring at them from the other side of the fence! There was rather a lot of noise - thankfully the neighbours all sleep at the front of their houses and didn't get disturbed! So a light sensor might work but would let them out when predators might just be sloping off to bed. A timer would let the owner decide when is safe for them to get up.
Have fun building your project and be careful - chickens are addictive!!!
 
Thank you guys so much for the responses to our survey (and I apologize for the late response with mine). Your views were taken into account when we designed our prototype and after several weeks of hard work and designing, we finally have our functioning automatic chicken coop door! It works by receiving light readings through a light dependent resistor (a photocell like sensor) which sends those readings to the micro controller which tells the motor to either open or close the door. It may seem simple, but a lot of computer programming and electrical wiring went into making this door. Here's a picture of our final prototype:

http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/e/e5/e5f9c644_10173336_814211661942288_2134408888_n.jpeg

The door has an opening of 16"x 16" so even larger chickens (possibly even turkeys) can fit through it. Those are also the dimensions our original client who proposed the project suggested, so we stuck with those. The control box and motor, which can't be seen, simply need to be water proofed and it could theoretically be used in a chicken coop.

Again, thank you guys so much for all the help you've given us for this project! :D
 
Hi Engineeringchick,
Your idea sounds great! I teach physics and have set my students similar tasks before, though never for a chicken door, sounds like an interesting project!
I also have a chickenguard automatic door that has a timer or light sensor option, and I know I wouldn't be without it now! Working full time means that I wouldn't have been able to keep chickens without it!

Good luck and all the best!
 
Hello Zoe,

Welcome, we are happy to help.

1) Would an automatic chicken coop door be of any interest to you? Yes, it would
2) If so, how much would you be willing to pay for it? (Less than 100$, between $100-$200, or over $200) - between the range of 100$-200$
3) If you already have a chicken coop door, are there any issues with it that you would like to be resolved? Should be geeting one this week
4) Would you rather have a door that runs on solar/battery power or electric power? Would you willing to pay extra for the solar panels? Yes and Yes
5) Should the door open on the side or from above? From above
6) Should a sensor be added on the door to count how many chickens have entered the coop and only close once all the chickens have re-entered the coop or are there usually not many stragglers come night time? Yes, definately
7) What would you consider a good sized chicken coop door? 1ft x 1ft or slightly larger or smaller? Smaller as I have small chciken breeds

https://ecopetlife.com/automatic-chicken-coop-door/
 
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