I love automation. I’m so easily distracted, it is easy for me to forget to do what I should when I should. And when I do forget, it causes me anxiety, so everything I can do to reduce the anxiety is a good thing (I have over 20 daily alarms on my phone when the kids are in school)!

The automatic door on the coop is awesome. After the sunrise, it opens up and the chickens come out, and at dusk, it closes again to keep the chickens safer. I don’t have to remember to open and close the coop. (And I love that the chickens put themselves to bed well before dusk. So neat.)

Now the heat has me stressed. It is still cool at night, but the day time “feels like” temperature has hit the 100s frequently. I have a fan in the coop, but if I leave it on all day, the temperature is actually higher around noon than if I left the fan off. But if I leave the fan off, by about 3pm the coop heats up to 100. And if I leave the fan on at night there is a chance of the chickens getting too cold. So I bought a temperature controller and an oscillating fan. When the temperature reaches 80 degrees, the fan will start, and help cool the coop. Then when the temperature drops back down to about 80, the fan will turn off. And the fan can be disassembled and cleaned so I can keep the dust build up off (since I read that most barn fires occur when dust collects in fans and overheats the motor).

I installed this a couple days ago, and since then we have had the most glorious 80 degree days. Too cool to actually trigger the fan. I’m not complaining; to test the fan I finally figured out that if I hold the temperature sensor in my hand, the controller will kick on. All good!

I made the first chicken run door and we put it up! It made doing health checks easier because after we checked weight, vent, and feet, we could separate the chickens who had been checked from those who hadn’t.

I’ll spread some more seed in the area and we will keep this door closed for a couple weeks to let the seed sprout. Eventually I’ll have three runs, once I get the other doors done.

I changed the way the outer door latches and unlatches, because I was afraid one of these times my eldest or I was going to accidentally lock the other in. So I used some scrap wood and a dowel to make a latch that can open from either side. We still have the hasp and lock to foil the raccoons, but this makes it easy to get in and out during the day.

My hand is covered in dirt, ash, and diatomaceous earth in my animated GIF, sigh. I was supplementing the chicken’s dust bath tire.

After making the new roost, the old roost, which was the old food and water hanger, needed a new purpose. So I unscrewed the two screws holding them together and made two roost swings! Yay, repurposing.