Any type of HVAC damper actuator can be configured as a coop door opener.
This Youtube video walks you through the steps and wiring details.
Using a heavy duty actuator like this closes the coop door with enough force to prevent any raccoon or monkey from pushing it up.
Spring is chicken season, and to celebrate, I’ve got some free and cheap goodies for our readers to enjoy. First, Pasture Basics is free on Amazon today. The book is full of everything I’ve learned about rotational chicken pasturing over the last few years and should help prevent the smelly, brown chicken runs I often see on others’ farms.
The second book, Thrifty Chicken Breeds, is marked down to 99 cents today. This companion ebook picks up where Pasture Basics leaves off and helps you choose the right type of chicken to put on your new pasture.
Success With Baby Chicks was at the top of my chicken reading list for 2011, but I was a bit disappointed by the contents. Robert Plamondon compiled a lot of information from old poultry-keeping documents and mixed in a bit of his own experience, which sounds like a recipe for success, but I found the book dry and lacking in the information I was really looking for. To be fair, most people nowadays do order chicks from hatcheries, so the absence of tips on incubation and hatching is understandable, but that was the part I wanted to know about most.
I would recommend Success With Baby Chicks to beginners planning to raise lots of chicks (perhaps to sell broilers or eggs) but probably not to the mainstream chicken-keeping public. That said, Robert Palmondon’s website (and his email list) are fonts of fascinating information and you should definitely check them out. His book is also very reasonably priced ($11.64 on Amazon), so it wouldn’t hurt to buy the book to support his work.
What’s next on my chicken reading list? Backyard Poultry Naturally by Alanna Moore, Jackie
French’s Chook Book, Day Range Poultry by Andy Lee, Feeding Poultry by Gustave Heuser, and — most intriguing of all — The Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery. The last is not yet published but is top of my list since I love everything Harvey Ussery has written. What chicken-related books have you read and enjoyed or plan to read soon?