Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: Planner on December 18, 2020, 14:55
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Hi all
Open to any ideas please?
I have kept chickens for at least 15 years. My set-up is that in non flu seasons, they roam the garden freely. However now they are in a 2 metre wide x 5 metre long and 3 metre high wire mesh enclosed run which I have also roofed with perspex. Three sides are meshed so plenty of fresh air. Within this run with their feeder and water hangers, i also constructed some roosting perches which they like to sit up on in the daytime. Also they have a large coop with nesting boxes and night time roosting bars. This also has a roof made of Onduline corrugated bitumen sheets.
My problem is that this latest flock, some of them decided that sleeping out at night on the coop roof is a great idea. The problem is that at night, they do most of their pooping and after a week or so the corrugated roof is heaving and summer months a maggot haven.
I have tried going down in the late evening and gently lifting them off and setting them onto the roosting bars with the others, but within a few hours, they are back out again toughing it out.
Yes I could just let it go, I was hoping that if we got a cold snap they might feel the need to roost inside, the only recent cold nights, they just huddled up together on the roof.
Any ideas, or am I stuck with a few "Bear Gryll's" chickens?
John
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I had the same problem with my girls after introducing a new one to the other two who insisted on sleeping outside on the roof. Needless to say the others followed suit, and despite going out late and putting them physically onto the roosting bar inside, they always went back out. This has gone on for several years now with various chooks following on this behaviour, until recently my three remaining girls have decided to sleep indoors. Not on the roosting bar though, but in the nest box where they stay all night pooping away. At least they lay their eggs in the corners of the hen house, making themselves little nests. I never resolved the problem, so good luck!
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Can you not shut them in the house once you’ve put them on the roost bars, or set up a light in the house & then an automatic door hat shuts once they’re in, then turn the light off lol. I’ve taken the house away now & have a freestanding nest box, first one girl started sleeping in it then a 2nd, goodness knows how they both get in it, it must be cosy, so I’m having to take the nest box out each afternoon & then go early & put it back in again, 5 days in & they all seem to be roosting on the bars now, but no eggs so I could have just taken the nest box out on day 1 lol
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We have had people on here before talking about chickens covered in a layer of frost in the morning, but still resolutely sleeping outside. You would have to put them in the coop and shut them in overnight to make them stay and carry on doing this for several weeks until the habit of sleeping out was broken.
As for the coop roof, I think the best bet is to just have a cleaning kit stationed nearby. A cheap dustpan and brush dedicated to the job plus a paint scraper should sort it and the mess you clean up can be chucked in the compost heap.