The Automatic Chicken Door

I am so grateful for my automatic chicken door. Every day, all by itself, it lets my chickens out of their house an hour after daybreak and locks them safely back inside just after dark. That means we don't have to be here anymore to do it and, more importantly, neither do our pet sitters. I probably can't describe what that means to me, but let me try.

Having so many animals, and at the same time loving to get away on weekends and for Christmas and Thanksgiving and summer vacation and sometimes just for an evening, we depend with the helplessness of new-born babies on pet sitters. In the early years, we relied on my husband's smart, young workmates, but then our dog Buffalo threw up some tampons on somebody's foot, and I guess word got out.

Beauregard III

Later, we lost two pet sitters because of our rooster Beauregard. As one explained, it wasn't because the donkey had slammed a stall door on her arm and raised a lump the size of Mt. Everest -- donkeys will do that, she said -- or because the dog went missing for an afternoon. It wasn't even because the chair she bought with her earnings blew off the truck and smashed to pieces on the interstate. No, she said, it was just because of the rooster. Awash in testosterone and dedicated to barnyard security, he saw the world through Blackwater eyes. He caught the pet sitter inside the perimeter one afternoon and, although I don’t think there was any real harm done, she was very upset that no one came when she screamed. She swore she would never pet sit for us again, and so far she has been good to her word.

I'm not proud of that episode, but things do happen sometimes when folks work around farm animals they are unaccustomed to. Not everybody knows how to maneuver through a crowd of donkeys or give a Rottweiler a pill or spot a rooster who’s ready to attack; and even if someone can manage part of that, she may not know the others. Our pet sitter, for example, is an expert horsewoman with big dogs of her own. Alas, however, she does not have chickens.

So we were thrilled when our 12-year-old neighbor Nathaniel came to work for us. Already a frequent and welcome visitor to our barnyard, he had a knack for animals and a cautious outlook overall. When he took on our farm as his after-school job, we fell through a wormhole into a parallel universe.  Four years without incident; four years of freedom. Thank you, Nathaniel, for that Golden Age.

There are no teens in our neighborhood now. Our grown-up neighbors help out when they can and we appreciate it; but when nobody here can do it, someone drives out from town, three miles each way. Our pet sitters make two trips a day to feed everybody, and until recently, because chickens don't come home to roost until dark, they made one more trip after sundown just to lock up the birds.

The Door

And that’s why our automatic chicken door is so wonderful. Its little plexiglass door opens and closes on an electric timer, replacing the late-night commute.  That means no more icy roads, no more stumbling around in the dark, no more watching out for copperheads, no more interrupted evenings, and maybe most important, no more encounters with the rooster.

As this small convenience settles into place, making life here on our farm a little bit easier for everyone and bringing us a little closer to a manageable retirement, my grateful heart, as always, fills with Southern song.

"Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,

While we all sup sorrow with the poor;

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;

Oh Hard times come again no more."

“Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard Times, hard times, come again no more

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;

Oh hard times come again no more." 

Hard Times                                     

Stephen Foster, 1856