Although I’ve long dreamed of raising a flock of chickens in my backyard, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Caring for living creatures takes a lot of work, and I need more on my to-do list than a chicken needs a xylophone (more on that later). But I wasn’t deterred. From robot vacuums in my living room to programmable hoses in my garden, I use a lot of smart technology to make my life easier. I figured someone had to have cracked the code to automate at least some of the care and feeding of suburban poultry—and if they hadn’t, I could.

It turns out that my premise was both true and false. Yes, there is a lot of clever technology that you can use to make raising chickens less of a chore. But you’re still dealing with living, breathing, clucking creatures, and they’re always going to be more expensive and time-consuming than you might think. On the other hand, they can also be pretty fun creatures to raise, and by using clever technology to do some of the heavy lifting, you can spend more time giving chicken hugs and thinking about how you became the person who always carries a can of dried worms around with you.

This is how I used smart technology to 'hack' my flock of four backyard chickens (Cacciatore, Marsala, Kiev and Korma).

I’m handy and have a Pinterest account so I was well positioned to build the coop of my dreams in a weekend, but that requires real work and the point was to avoid that nonsense. Instead I was only too happy to try out the Smart Coop.