Is it necessary to close wood coop door at night if attached to run?

[Wyorp Rock]

My food and water are both in the coop (chickens only, no ducks!), and in Michigan winters, the waterers are on heated bases. Chickens eat last thing before roosting in the evening, and at first morning light. I'm not out there at dawn to open the coop to the run, so feed and water must be inside. An at-home very motivated person could bring fresh unfrozen ware out three times a day in winter, but that won't work here for me! Mary

x2

I keep water in the run on a heated base as well. Right now sunrise is around 7am here, so they get off the roost and eat and drink. I let them out by 7:15am, give a little scratch to start the day. I don't free range so they go inside to eat. They use both waterers. If I did have to keep them locked in the coop for some reason or could not make it out until later in the day, etc., I like knowing that they have food and water available at all times.

Hi, I'm new. I have a chicken coop with an attached run. I would like to keep my water outside during the winter so the coop stays dry. If I put chicken wire on the bottom of the run can I leave the chicken wood door open all the time with just plastic strips covering it ?I have 4 chickens and two ducks

Is this because of the ducks? Do they splash around? I don't have any, so I am not familiar with how to drink, etc. You may want to ask on the duck forum if anyone keeps ducks and chickens together and how they manage water.

 

[donrae]

I also have no door between my coop and my run. food is inside, water is outside. My coop is large enough the feeder doesn't take up necessary space and this keeps it dry (PNW). I'm down to a solitary, elderly drake at the moment, but we've kept ducks with our chickens for years. They're incredible messy with the water.

the only reason for a door on the coop is predator protection. If you're confident about that, you should be good to go.

Personally, my run is open topped chicken wire. There's 2x4 welded? wire around the bottom to keep the dogs out. Dogs will go right through chicken wire, as will most predators. My dogs and my neighbor's dogs are my secondary line of defense. I've not lost a bird to a predator except my own barn cats in 10 years. Thankfully, my immediate neighbors all run dogs either strictly for predator protection or for crop protection, so our raccoon population (our main predator around here) has learned to avoid our little neighborhood.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Hey there, and welcome to the joy of keeping chickens

I bet the ducks are cute and funny too!

My coop is permanently attached to the run, and both are very predator proof. Therefore I do not even have a door at all to close the coop from the run. I've had this set up nearly 9 months without any problems as far as predators go.
However, chicken wire is NOT a safe approach to predator proofing. You need hardware cloth, I would suggest a maximum of 1/2 in weave for the bottom two or three feet of the coop, than you can use a maximum of 1 in up top, but personally I used smaller. I also have very large rocks in the ground around my whole setup so that nothing can dig under. There are several approaches to keeping animals from digging under the structure to get inside (a common one being to bury the hardware cloth a foot and a half straight down into the ground). But that was an unreasonable approach for us so we dug massive rocks out of the ground in the surrounding woods and lined them around the coop, then covered them with dirt.

So in short, there is no need at all to completely close up the coop at night if there is no way that other animals can get in

hope this is helpful!

This is not predator proof. This is why I don't attempt to keep everything out of the run and just close the coop every night. It's rather costly and difficult to 100% predator proof runs. The above run has 1" openings which means a weasel can easily enter the run and with door open on coop take out the entire flock in a night. It's not a question of if this will happen it's when. Stouts or weasels are practically in every region and difficult to stop. A wooden coop with hard ware cloth over all openings and a door that is closed every night stops them.

When I make runs I use 2x4 welded wire in 14 ga. This stops all animals excepting weasels. Nothing else will fit in or is able to chew through that gauge wire. With fixed runs a digging barrier of of good ga. welded wire can be made by laying flat on ground from run wall out 18-24 inches to allow grass to grow through and envelop it or put under sod flat. When an animal digs to get in it hits the wire, can't chew it so moves over and digs at fence line again only to hit the wire. They don't think to back up to dig. I also use electric netting spring, summer and fall as it's portable. That stops all day time ground predators but again I close the coop at night.

 

[ChickCrazed]

This is not predator proof. This is why I don't attempt to keep everything out of the run and just close the coop every night. It's rather costly and difficult to 100% predator proof runs. The above run has 1" openings which means a weasel can easily enter the run and with door open on coop take out the entire flock in a night. It's not a question of if this will happen it's when. Stouts or weasels are practically in every region and difficult to stop. A wooden coop with hard ware cloth over all openings and a door that is closed every night stops them.

When I make runs I use 2x4 welded wire in 14 ga. This stops all animals excepting weasels. Nothing else will fit in or is able to chew through that gauge wire. With fixed runs a digging barrier of of good ga. welded wire can be made by laying flat on ground from run wall out 18-24 inches to allow grass to grow through and envelop it or put under sod flat. When an animal digs to get in it hits the wire, can't chew it so moves over and digs at fence line again only to hit the wire. They don't think to back up to dig. I also use electric netting spring, summer and fall as it's portable. That stops all day time ground predators but again I close the coop at night.

X2, and mink will also be able to fit through a 1" hole. I live no where near water and had a mink in my horse barn about 10 feet away from my coop. Unless your entire run is 1/4" hardware cloth i would not consider it predator proof and would close the pop door. I invested in Ador doors for my pop doors. Best investment ever.

 

[KJzCola]

 
This is not predator proof. This is why I don't attempt to keep everything out of the run and just close the coop every night. It's rather costly and difficult to 100% predator proof runs. The above run has 1" openings which means a weasel can easily enter the run and with door open on coop take out the entire flock in a night. It's not a question of if this will happen it's when. Stouts or weasels are practically in every region and difficult to stop. A wooden coop with hard ware cloth over all openings and a door that is closed every night stops them. 

When I make runs I use 2x4 welded wire in 14 ga. This stops all animals excepting weasels. Nothing else will fit in or is able to chew through that gauge wire. With fixed runs a digging barrier of of good ga. welded wire can be made by laying flat on ground from run wall out 18-24 inches to allow grass to grow through and envelop it or put under sod flat. When an animal digs to get in it hits the wire, can't chew it so moves over and digs at fence line again only to hit the wire. They don't think to back up to dig. I also use electric netting spring, summer and fall as it's portable. That stops all day time ground predators but again I close the coop at night. 

X2, and mink will also be able to fit through a 1" hole.  I live no where near water and had a mink in my horse barn about 10 feet away from my coop.  Unless your entire run is 1/4" hardware cloth i would not consider it predator proof and would close the pop door.  I invested in Ador doors for my pop doors. Best investment ever.

To clarify, I listed what I've read as a minimum reccomended weave for predator proofing, as stated clearly in the post, I used smaller weave hardware cloth all the way around. I used thick gauaged 1/4" and 1/2" weave hardware cloth allover my run and coop openings. I will say it was quite nice to look out the window and see a hawk that was diving for a chicken bounce off the top of the run. Something like that makes you thankful for the hard work you put into protecting your flock.

 

[dbjcompany]

What kind of bedding do you use in he coop? Do you worry about a fire starting with the heater? When I leave water in the coop the bedding seems to get wet

 

[PlanterJeff]

I personally close my coop door for four main reasons:
1.) My rooster likes to crow really early and the keeping him in the coop helps keep the sound down so it doesn't wake me up on the weekends.
2.) Prevent Drafts during the Winter.
3.) Maybe predator prevention, but honestly, my run is pretty secure with it being completely covered in .5 inch Hardware cloth. I also don't think we have weasels in downtown Atlanta or even GA, but I do have rats and possums.
4.) I actually enjoy pulling the door pull cord in the meeting and watching them march out of the coop all happy like.

With this being said, I probably don't have to do it. It's just a second line of defense because I know that if a possum were to some how figure out how to chew through the hardware cloth, my chickens would still be safe.

 

[Blooie]

I have chickens but not ducks. I keep food and water in the run year round. I have power in both the run and the coop so I put a stock tank heater in the water bucket to keep it thawed. Yep, it gets cold here in Northern Wyoming, (0 degrees this morning) but my run is as predator safe as human hands could make it so my pop door is open year round. We have a hoop run, and we cover it with clear plastic in winter, leaving some openings at the top for ventilation of course. We built a sort of "tunnel" between the two....the chickens go inside the covered wooden box, then make a left turn into the coop. That helps insure air flow between the two without direct drafts blowing into the coop.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

What kind of bedding do you use in he coop? Do you worry about a fire starting with the heater? When I leave water in the coop the bedding seems to get wet

I use pine shavings for the bedding.
I have electricity in the coop. I do have a wood floor, but we cut a piece of heavy flashing the size of a cinder block, this was "caulked" to the floor, installed a porcelain light fixture on top of the metal, put the cinder block on that (surrounds the light fixture and sits on the metal), then "capped" the cinder block with another piece of metal then my metal waterer sits on this. I can then switch on the light(heat) when the temps are below freezing. I do uncap the block and check to make sure no shavings, etc., get in there but it is always clear. Now, with this setup the water is pretty much in a permanent position, so if you do something like this, you will need to make sure that is exactly where you want it.
Now, you have ducks as well, which if I understand correctly will splash more around with the water (they are ducks!

) and this will make the bedding soggy and yucky. I'm not sure what the best solution to your situation is. Do they drink from a regular waterer like the chickens do, or does it need to be deeper so they can dip their bills?

 

[GNRMorgans]

I like to think we have a pretty secure run - 1/2 inch hardware cloth all over and buried. I keep both food and water in the coop - mainly for ease of delivery and because I have power in the coop to keep a heated waterer. In the summer - I get lazy and don't close the coop door. In the winter, we close the door. This is mainly due to limiting drafts for the chickens. We don't have ducks, but I know friends that do have their water outside in the run and the ducks wait til their door is open without an issue. So if you want to keep your water outside - which I think is probably a better thing, you could with your ducks too. I would close the door in winter to keep the coop cozier, and close it all the time if you're concerned about security. Best of luck!