A Simple Chicken Coop Improvement

 For years, I've had trouble, particularly in the winter time, with the big door (people door) on my chicken coop not staying shut while I'm in there gathering eggs and counting chickens after shutting them in in the evenings. Or, when feeding and watering the chickens during a time period where I don't want them to get out of the coop--like when I have freshly seeded my garden and if the chickens are out all day they will wander over to the garden and scratch up and eat all the seeds I sewed (that's a few weeks where I limit their outdoor time to a few hours in the evening so they stay close to the coop).

Most especially in the winter, I want the door to not be open any longer than it takes me to go through the doorway in order to conserve heat.  The fact that it doesn't shut tight when I'm in there isn't a huge deal, except for when a strong wind takes it and whips it forcefully open.  One of these days that wind is gonna rip it right off the hinges.  Or, more likely, rip the hinges right out of the wall, leaving me a bigger problem to fix.

This has become a much more frequent problem since we moved the coop, back in 2022, to make room for building DH's shop.  To come up with a fix for this got put on the to-do list, but because it wasn't an all-the-time problem, it was really low priority for the resident handyman (and forgotten about by said handyman).

Well, I finally got tired of the issue not being addressed.  I went and bought a small hook and eye type latch, grabbed a screw and DH's cordless drill/screwdriver, made a pilot hole with the screw, then hand threaded in the little eye screws of the latch.  One went into the door frame on the wall, and the other went onto the cross piece on the door.  Problem solved.

Now I can 'lock' myself in while I'm doing tasks that I want the door to remain shut for, thus keeping the door from getting ripped open in the wind. Five minutes, a buck or two (or maybe three, inflation these days) in hardware, and life is good.