The Problems with Ducks

One of my ducks continues to smash or eat her egg.  I have taken to getting up at 5:30 am every morning and going out to either save the egg or clean it up.  Unfortunately it appears to be an unbreakable bad habit of Amelia's at this point but I like to get out there early anyway.  I figure that I need to release all my birds from the chicken house before they dream up any new mischief and create any new bad habits.

As of this morning, I no longer have to get up at 5:30 am to let the chickens and ducks out of the chicken coop.  Mike has bought and installed an automatic chicken door!  Our church secretary mentioned to me that she had one and when I mentioned it to Mike he got me one just like hers.  Once we received the door, Mike decided the markup on these doors must be huge and the company is making a fortune off of these marketing to chicken hobbyists but he installed it anyway.
 

Of course, the door didn't fit.  The opening we had was bigger than the new door.
Mike had to make some adjustments as Frankie looked on.  

The new door is made of heavy duty galvanized steel.  It opens at dawn and closes at dusk because of a built in photo sensor and a 6 volt battery.  It also has a manual override button and will automatically revert back to opening and closing itself when the light agrees with the door position.  

So Mike installed the door yesterday morning but then we had to wait all day to actually test it.  Around 4 pm on his way to go with fishing and walk all five dogs, he stopped to check that the door was at least still open.   It was.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that he found the ducks outside the coop.  I had checked for eggs earlier and had inadvertently left the pen door unlatched.  The ducks took this opportunity to go exploring.  

Fortunately the dogs didn't notice anything amiss and Mike herded them back to the house and locked them inside.  He called for me and we went back and guided the ducks back into through the open pen door.  Thank goodness the day I left the door open was the day Mike installed the door and was keeping an eye on the coop.  

Speaking of keeping an eye on the coop, Mike and I pulled up the lawn chairs and watched the coop door last night.  We wanted to make sure it closed.  Sunset was suppose to be around 7:53 but it wasn't completely dark by then.  We watched until about 8:23 when Mike heard a quiet whirring sound and the door closed.  All our chickens and ducks had been inside the shed and to bed about fifteen minutes earlier so it looks like this automatic door is going to work well.  

Note:  It also opened on its own the following morning.  When I got to the chicken coop around 6:30 am the door was wide open and the chickens and ducks were in the coop yard.