The results are in. We no longer have any backyard animals, but we do have some hard numbers to share with you about raising goats and chickens. In this video we answer the question: does homesteading save money?
In the past month, we lost 2 chickens to a mysterious predator, and gave our last one away. Blanche had 2 babies, Arthur and Stanley. And we failed to try our hand at gardening this spring. We have plans to fix our mistakes in the fall. But until then…
It’s ALIVE!!! I finally got my DIY automatic chicken coop door working, and temporarily installed. I used a power antenna motor to drive the door on cabinet drawer slides. The whole unit is solar powered by a 12 volt battery.
I used a DC timer and DPDT relay to trigger the opening and closing of the door. In the video, I put all of the components in a nice plastic enclosure that hides most of the wires.
It worked perfectly, closing at sunset and opening at sunrise!
Here’s a link to the wiring diagram:?https://goo.gl/hGL0GZ
Part 1 – https://goo.gl/b9Xscb
Part 2 – https://goo.gl/spz6CQ
We wanted to make our chickens easier to take care of by building our own automatic chicken coop door opener. Using a couple of parts off eBay, we’re able to set up a 12V door opening system complete with opener, battery, and solar panel.
Things didn’t go as planned in this episode because the light sensor switch, which would normally open the door at sunrise and close it at sunset would not work.
But we got a great start, and decided on a design for the chicken coop that looks like an aircraft hangar!