Near where I live, someone set up a place where their goats and chickens are mainly roaming free in an area that has a fence put around it. Sometimes when I have a moment for a stroll in my day, I go visit them, and at one point, it happened that I was there during the time when the sun was beginning to set. As the sun was starting to disappear, all the chickens went back to their coop. They lined up at the door because, as it seems, chickens have a natural instinct that makes them go home before it’s dark out.
Keeping your chickens safe at night with RUN-CHICKEN
Why is that important? That’s an instinct of them and something they do to stay safe from predators. I was wondering about precisely that before. How can they just live out in the open without anyone protecting them, becoming the prey of foxes and other animals who would hunt them in their natural habitat? The chickens are safe once they go home to their coop, but how to keep the predators out and still allow the chicken to freely go out again in the morning without a person going there to lock and unlock the coop?
The Slovenian company RUN-TIGER, founded in 2018, operates a brand called RUN-CHICKEN, and they came up with a solution that addresses exactly this aspect of a chicken’s life. Staying safe from predators at night, but being able to go out as soon as the sun comes up again without a person who would manually need to open the doors of the coop. The product is called RUN-CHICKEN Model T50, and it’s basically an automatically operated chicken coop gate that shuts down for the nighttime.
Despite the company being located in Slovenia, they still managed to make this solution available to people in many countries. You can, for instance, simply check out the RUN-CHICKEN store on Amazon. In case of anything breaking, they also offer you to buy spare parts right there and no need to wait for an international shipment to arrive after weeks and months.
How does the T50 automatic chicken coop door work?
How does that work? The RUN-CHICKEN Model T50 coop door operates with an ordinary pair of AA batteries, which last about one year before you’d need to replace them. A light sensor is installed in front of the product, which allows it to trigger the closing mechanism as soon as the night draws near, and opens up again as soon as there is sunlight again – allowing the chicken to roam free again.
There is also a safety-stop feature in the product, so in case the door notices there is anything that obstructs the gate, it would automatically stop and not crush the chickens that might be late to come home. The only additional feature I’d like to see in future models would be to replace the battery with a solar panel to make the system even more self-sustainable. Still, I am sure the team at RUN-CHICKEN is already looking at how this could be done.
I get it. This isn’t your average consumer type of gadget. I suppose it’s fair to assume many of our readers are not having any chicken roaming their gardens or fields elsewhere. Still, I was very intrigued by such a sophisticated design that elegantly addresses this problem.
This is indeed a niche problem, but those as well require good innovation, and this seems like a good example for exactly that. If you know any chicken owners, make sure you let them know about this as well. Maybe you can help to save one or two chickens from becoming a fox snack. Who knows.
If you want to know more, you can also check out the video below, which shares some more details about the Model T50 of the RUN-CHICKEN coop gate gadget and shows how it’s configured.
YouTube: Run-Chicken Video Instruction (Model T50)
Story pitched by news scout Pupu Liang.
Thanks for that!
Photo credit: All images shown are owned by RUN-TIGER, who operate RUN-CHICKEN, and are used with permission.
