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Backyard chicken farming is a great hobby, and surprisingly tech heavy.

My Coop controller, which is hand build by grumpy bearded East Germans, even has modules to integrate into a smart home system and supports remote monitoring via cellular network.

https://jost-technik.de/PHB2.0-Klappensteller%20+%20Steuerun...

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It's only tech heavy if you decide it should be though.

I tried the low tech version first, and one night forgot to close the coop and brother fox killed all the chicken.

Also chicken are not particularly smart, so switching on light to lure them in when it’s getting dark is very useful.

Unless you have too many to do this, you just need to show them in the first couple of nights, and after that they pretty much help themselves.

I just have a door that automatically opens/closes with sunrise/sunset. My chickens have never been caught outside.

A couple of months ago, I had to replace the roof on their coop and locked the door so they couldn’t get in and get hurt (they are intensely curious whenever anyone is inside their coop). Construction ran into the evening, and the poor birds were visibly (and audibly) upset about not being able to go inside once it got dark.

They’re smarter than people give them credit.

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