Cold coop

One of the pieces of tech we have in the chicken coop is an automatic chicken door that opens and closes on a timer, keeping the chickens safe at night.  Over the last few weeks we have had a couple instances where the door did not open in the morning.  When I would test the motor in the morning it appeared to be dead however later in the day it would start working again.

Well this morning the door was once again stuck closed and I finally recognized a common theme to the problem, it happens when it is cold.  This morning at the house it was a chilly 42 degrees.  The other days we have had a problem it was also on the chilly side.  My assumption is there is a marginal connection inside the motor unit that breaks contact when the temperature drops below a certain point.

Unfortunately this is not a quick or easy fix. The motor should be under warranty still but the fact that the problem is intermittent could make getting it replaced touchy.  It is a long process as well where I have to remove the motor, ship it to the guy at automaticchickencoopdoor.com, hope he sees the problem, and then wait for a new motor to be shipped back to me so I can reinstall it.

Cindy and I watched the second episode in the OJ series.  We seem to be finding out a lot of information that was not widely known to the public.  For instance last night it was revealed that the famous white Ford Bronco that lead LA police for an endless low speed chase was actually not OJ’s.  Yes OJ owned a white Ford Bronco but that was impounded before the chase began.  AJ Cowling, OJ’s friend and driver of the vehicle during the chase evidently owned his own white Ford Bronco that was pretty much identical to OJ’s.  That was the vehicle millions of people watched some 22 years ago.  It also appears at one point Robert Kardashian told OJ’s family that he killed himself which obviously was not the case, fascinating.