Pete's Log: New Year, Same Chickens
Entry #2173, (Chickens)(posted when I was 44 years old.)
When we were getting ready to leave the house Sunday morning, while I was taking the trash out, I heard chicken noises. I thought this slightly unusual, since it was still a good two or more hours until sunrise, but maybe they had heard me. Then I noticed Elsa was in the run. My first thought was she must not have gotten in the coop before the door closed. But then I realized the door was open!
Our coop has an automatic door. It's currently programmed to open at 6:30 am and close at 5:30 pm. It also has a "crush sensor" to avoid squishing a chicken in the door. When we first moved the coop into our yard, we learned the sensor sometimes needs re-calibrating after a move, otherwise it will falsely detect a crush and not close. Re-calibrating is triggered by removing and re-inserting the batteries.
When we moved the chickens into the garage, I remembered to verify the door was still closing properly after the move. But after moving them back outside, I forgot to do so. So of course the door was now falsely detecting crushes. So the ladies had been sleeping with the door open for a couple nights. And of course I discovered this when we were trying to leave for the airport. Removing the batteries involves removing four screws, which was fun to do in the dark. But I got it done, verified the door closed properly and verified the schedule was still correctly programmed. And we still made it to the airport with plenty of time.
Monday morning, we got a text from Jamie's Dad. He was at our house and the chickens were still locked in the coop. We were able to call him and walk him through how to manually open the door, and then through checking the programming on the door. What we figured out is that while I remembered to verify the schedule after re-inserting the batteries, I forgot to verify the time. The clock was running about five hours slow. So at least the chickens would've been released eventually. But I still felt bad. Rich got the clock set correctly for us and from then on the door appears to have worked as intended.
The chickens were all asleep when we got home last night, but seemed happy to see us today. I spent an hour outside with them, giving their coop a good clean and letting them forage and stretch their legs. This was only our second time spending a night away from the chickens and the first multi-night absence. They seemed to manage just fine. Anna and Elsa did keep tabs on my progress cleaning the coop:
After I was done and had lured them back inside with blueberries, they all settled onto the perch (Olaf had only started using the perch while they were in the garage). I was excited to finally capture a picture with all three of them on the perch, even if two of them are showing us their butts.
Anyway, I'm toying with the idea of buying a second automatic door to take apart and figure out if I can hook some probes onto the board to monitor with an ESP32 or similar device and thus monitor from Home Assistant. And more than ever, I want to get that outdoor chicken cam working.