Rural Gardening: Free ranging and automatic coop door, 1 by mcamden

mcamden wrote:
I free range my chickens every day, all year round. I open the small coop door each morning and close it each night. The problem is that if we get delayed in town, we have to try to find a neighbor to drive out and close the coop for us so nothing gets in. The very few times we havent found someone to do this we have found racoon, and a ferrel cats in the coop.

I want to build an automatic door. I would put it on a timer to open in the morning at a certain time, and close in the evening at a certain time. It would have to be power based so that it would only open with power (so in case we lost power while out of town, it would not open at night ect).

Does anyone have any suggestions for this? I am really motivated to do this, and I know there has to be a way to build somthing that would work.

I know my picture doesnt have much to do with this...but it shows that even my DH loves the chickens. hahahaha....

Melissa