You’re welcome. You may have better luck with the Zwave device depending on how far away the coop is from the hub/repeaters. Zwave has a longer range, but Zigbee allows more signal hopping, so it can be resolved either way. 
Zigbee is also better at getting through rain and high humidity as compared to series 500 zwave. (Series 800 should improve on this, as well as Zwave Long Range in series 700.)
For that reason, Zigbee has often been preferred for outdoor applications, including getting signal to outbuildings. (Again, that will probably change with zwave long range, but there are very few ZLR devices available yet.)
There are different motion sensor technologies available. The ones based on photo detection won’t work well in dusty environments. The good news is that most of the inexpensive ones sold for home automation systems use PIR: passive infrared, which is changes in heat passing across the detection field. Those are not typically affected by external dust. However, dust getting inside the device can be quite damaging, so you would want one with an IP rating starting with at least 6.
The next issue for a PIR sensor inside a chicken coop is sensitivity. In order to prevent false alarms, many sensors sold for home automation are intended NOT to detect organisms under about 40 pounds. Most adult chickens weigh 5 to 6 pounds, and of course bantams are only 2 or 3. On the other hand, if the chickens move in a group, they are small enough that the sensor algorithm may count them as one event, which can be helpful in this regard. It can take some trial and error to find the right sensitivity for each location. And flock size may also be a factor.
Let’s say you do find a PIR sensor that can handle a dusty environment and will trigger on a single 4 pound chicken passing through the detection field. Are we done with the engineering part yet? 
Nope. Chickens are hotter than humans relative to the surrounding air. Typical body heat of 106°, but some breeds run even hotter. Assuming you aren’t using supplemental heat for chicks, it’s quite likely that your PIR sensor will interpret even very small movements like fluffing as a “motion” event. And even if you only have 6 to 8 birds, the odds of all of them being still for any length of time are pretty small.
There’s also the fact that chickens drop manure while they sleep. If your sensors are too sensitive, this can trigger them.
So defining a period of “no motion” in the yard around the coop is fairly simple, but inside the coop will probably be much more challenging.
And I wouldn’t even know where to begin if you use deep litter composting. The temperature at floor level is going to change considerably over time as the pile matures. I don’t know what that’s going to do to the detection field for a highly sensitive PIR sensor. 
All of which is to say: sure, “motion” sensors can be useful with chicken coops. Especially in detecting predators approaching the coop or a flock of chickens moving together into the tomato patch. But as far as detecting “no motion” inside a coop, that’s going to be a lot trickier than the typical home automation scenario.
I don’t keep chickens now, but my family did when I was a kid, and my extended family still includes several working farmers, so I do hear about some of the AgTech trends and issues. 
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@JDRoberts & @blueyetisoftware, I was thinking about this the other day and thought you would appreciate another train of thought on this… under the “Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer” category.
The CoopBoss had a terminal for a manual momentary pushbutton switch. Each person that bought one would buy their own doorbell button to manually activate a door open or close action, essentially for when you were at the coop and didn’t have your phone handy - you could still manually open or close the door just by pressing the button.
Because the CoopBoss was designed to have an initial setup completed on SmartThings, but run totally independent of a network connection of any type, anyone using it today is using a CoopBoss in offline mode - they have simply been running nonstop ever since the applications stopped working many moons ago.
What I’ll really miss is being able to manually open/close the door, or ‘see’ what state the door is in. Here’s my solution for now:
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Use the dry contacts relay on either a ZooZ Zen17 or a cheap Zigbee one like this one to activate the door open/close action and let the CoopBoss continue to do its job automatically. This preserves all the settings and automated functionality that is already there, except you cannot see status (temp, door status, lux) of the CoopBoss since it is working offline.
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Attach a Door Open/Closed sensor on the coop sliding door to show whether it is opened or closed. I picked up a couple Zigbee ones designed for an Xfinity Alarm system off Amazon the other day for $8 each.
Maybe a little clunky and much less polished than the CoopBoss DH’s and Apps all working in an ecosystem, but it will still work.
Also, I had forgotten that the light controls are separate from the CoopBoss anyway - so they will continue to work. Those automations (turn on at sunset minus 15 hours, for example) are separate and already working on the new platform.
What I’ll miss are the ‘door jammed’ warnings that were an auxiliary CoopBoss app, so I will need to check things a little more often. To address this, I will write a couple rules/automations to warn me of those, like “If door is open after sunset, (it is likely jammed, so…) send a notification or turn a light bulb in the house “red” so I can see it is still open”. Or the converse - if door is closed after sunrise, then send a notification. Those are the 2 most likely ‘jammed’ scenario.
Thanks for all your tips and conversation above! Hopefully this thread will help others who are in the same boat. The CoopBoss wasn’t your every-day commodity integration, but it sure is a lifesaver for those of us with backyard flocks.
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The combination of the relay and sensor is essentially what is in the garage door example for the virtual driver. If you set it up like the example, and the door doesn’t close, the virtual door will go into ‘unknown’ state. You can use that as a trigger for a jammed door notification. It will also go into that state if you tell it to open, and it doesn’t open the contact sensor.
Edit: adding original link for reference
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The combination of the relay and sensor is essentially what is in the garage door example for the virtual driver. If you set it up like the example, and the door doesn’t close, the virtual door will go into ‘unknown’ state. You can use that as a trigger for a jammed door notification. It will also go into that state if you tell it to open, and it doesn’t open the contact sensor.
That is perfect - thanks so much! Off to play… 
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Just be sure to note the difference in automations when the contact sensor is being used vs the door. Conceptually, telling the door to open/close will change that state to opening/closing and hit your relay. Your contact sensor is then synced to the virtual contact on the door, confirming that the action occurred.
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For anyone following this thread who wants to keep their coop boss working:
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Get a switch with a Momentary Dry Contact relay - something like a ZooZ Zen17 or a cheap Zigbee one like this one. Use that to actuate the existing CoopBoss. That will leave important parameters (like the door jammed amperage rating) saved in the CoopBoss and allow the safety features to continue. You won’t be able to change the rating, but at least your last saved parameter will continue to work.
The “Virtual” Garage Door you will be building in the following steps will actuate an open/close action using the manual open/close button that the CoopBoss already has. -
Get a Door/Window sensor. Doesn’t matter what kind or brand. You will be mounting this on your actual door that you built to open/close. This is needed by the Virtual Garage Door driver to detect a jammed or failed (aka “Unknown”) state that you can build routines from to notify you (the same way CoopBoss would notify on a jammed state).
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Visit Blue Yeti’s Virtual Hub Kit page, click the first link to their Virtual Hub Edge Drivers, and install the driver called Virtual Devices to your hub.
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Go to your SmartThings app, and tell it to search for new devices. You will see a new device called “Virtual Hub” installed. You can move it to the room of your choosing.
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Tap the Virtual Hub device and select the gear icon. You will be prompted for which type of device, like Door, Fan, Garage Door, Lock, etc. Select Garage Door. This creates a Virtual Garage Door device.
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Find the Virtual Garage Door you created, move it to the room you want it in, and rename it. Mine is “CoopBoss Reincarnated”.
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Visit the 3-dots menu and select settings. Set Cycle Time to the time it takes to open or close the door.
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Now you can add routines from that virtual door that are more useful than standalone routines. The virtual door can alert you when the door is open or closed based on a contact sensor, and you have some specific control over the actions that you would not have in normal routines, like number of seconds the open or close cycle time should take before the virtual door goes in to an error state (“unknown”) in the virtual device.
This virtual device simplifies the routines you would need to write to accomplish the same thing - very handy!
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Be sure to visit Blue Yeti’s Virtual Hub Kit page again and set up your Virtual Door and Virtual Contact Sensor based on his examples. “Garage Right” in his examples is the Virtual Door. “Door Right Contact” and “Door Right Relay” refer the physical devices. Once you set up according to his sample, you can use the button on the Virtual Door to open/close it and control other routines.
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The routines I added and found most useful with the virtual Garage Door were:
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Coop Door Closing (Changes colors on a Hue lamp in the house so I can see when it is closing)
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Coop Door Opening (same as above - just a different color for opening)
You can add these functions to the ones in his examples. -
Coop Door Open SUCCESS (Changes a Hue light to a specific color for 10 minutes to indicate success)
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Coop Door Close SUCCESS (Same idea as above - just a different color)
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Coop Door Jammed - sends a notification if the virtual door goes into an UNKNOWN state - usually that means it is jammed.
I hope this is helpful for anyone who hasn’t yet ventured into the world of virtual devices! Special thanks to @blueyetisoftware and @JDRoberts for the great discussion and inspiration!
Edit: Added step 9 to clarify you need to add those routines.
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