Ok so I want to close the door to my coop when all the hens are inside.
So I want to know if you have an idea of how to know when all the hens are inside.
I have thought about making a reader at the entrence of the coop, like an RFID kind of reader, and the hens would have a small tag. Or making a local tracking system, so I would know where all my hens are.
Please tell me what you think about these two ideas or you have a better one!
Tracking the position of all the hens is a hard project and probably not possible with Arduino. Putting ID chips in the hens and reading them at the door might work, although I don't know how you would know if they are entering or leaving.
Emphasis on might rather than work.
Maybe put pressure sensors under the legs of the coop and measure the weight, then you can deduce if all the chickens are inside.
This sort of question comes up fairly often on here, do some searching to see what others have tried.
For knowing if they enter or not I would be putting two readers, one in the front one in the back and based on them I can know in which direction they go. However I don't know what solution to use to read the IDs, I need a way to read multiple hens ID at once.
Sorry that's the limit of my Ideas on this one. Do some searching or hope someone else comes along with something better.
Good luck with your project.
Thank you mate! No worries.
You can study their behavior to see when they all get in the house when the light gets low.
After some study, suggest you just close the door when the light gets low plus 10 minutes or so.
Yes this was the first design, however it needs to have quite a big range of error, and i don't know how well it will work around the year. But if everything fails I will revert back to it.
Maybe have a door tunnel that has a width of one chicken only.
Then count the number going into the house vs the number going out of the house.
Yes this might be the best solution out there. Still would love to have a way to ID them 
The point was made that no readily available RFID modules are able to sense at the distance of the width of a chicken (door).
Which is a trifle tricky as the optical beam sensors will not be able to distinguish chicken from fox. 
If a fox gets in he will gain so much weight, will not be able to get out thru the small tunnel door.
Kill the fox the next day. 
Yes, very efficient 
There are RFID systems that use an antenna that wraps around the perimeter of a doorway. They can read multiple tags as they pass through too.
However, they tend to be used for inventory control in an industrial or medical setting, so I doubt that they're in the "chicken coop money" range. Might be worth a look though.
Edit: Also, chicken coop projects come up here fairly regularly. I don't recall ever seeing one that solved this problem: everyone just opens and closes the door based on time or light level.
They sure do! 
So......the best sensor here is the one in the chicken's head. You will observe that as a very specific level and type of daylight - the hens will go to bed all by themselves.
They know when to hit the hay.
wildbill is correct.
We have had hens for years, and our coop opener/closer simply has a RTC that opens and closes the door at specific times - before the foxes come sniffing.
OK- we have to adjust the open and close times during the year, but maybe only 4 times. However, it has worked flawlessly for many many years.
You could use a light or similar to sense when it's dark as an alternative as wildbill mentioned.
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