Choosing a chicken coop door

 Choosing a chicken coop door for us wasn’t as easy as 1, 2, 3. We are on our second year of being chicken owners and I love it! Although I love them, it gets to become a chore some nights having to walk back out and close everything up at night. 

First automatic chicken coop door we got was part of my Mother’s Day gift. 💝 but didn’t work so well. After Ben got all the measurements set up, pieces made, got the solar panel charged up in the sun and our youngest son helped him with installing it….it didn’t work. The App we were instructed to download to work it rarely worked with it. The remote control didn’t close it for us. We had to go out and press the close button on the solar panel every single night defeating the purpose of having an automatic coop door.

China made vs American made

We ordered it through Amazon from China. It was cheaper than the American made one we were eyeing up so we thought we’d save a few bucks. The customer service man from Amazon was very kind and tried to help, we got into contact with the makers, they made it quite a hassle but after a few weeks we got a replacement. During the wait for the replacement, they sent us a code for $40 on Amazon to leave a good review. We threw the code out 🗑️. We appreciate the gift card, but we’re not going to lose our integrity for it. In our opinion, that company did not provide a 5 star performance. 

The second one they sent didn’t work well at all. Every evening when we’d close it, no matter what we tried with the app, manually pressing buttons and trying to time it, the chicken coop door would open after every 30 minutes through out the night. First night it clearly stressed out our chickens a bit. 

🐔🐔😖😖🐔🐔

So we bought the other automatic chicken coop door we had our eye on. Through Amazon. It costs more but it's American owned and we’re happy with it. Company is Farmlite. No app baloney, timer works and comes with remote….that works!! Weather resistant which will be tested in these Wisconsin winters!! So far so good. I recommend it 👍

Get it for your chickens here https://amzn.to/4d1J6tC  👈🐔

Now I haven't had to worry if we were gone late and forgot to close everything up! We free range our chickens but if we know we are leaving for awhile, we keep them in the fence. Most evenings, I can go out, make sure their window is shut, get them in the fence, count them up and head back inside for the evening. They still get their extra long summer nights outside, just in the safety of the fence and when they're ready to head in for the night, the automatic coop door closes up for me!