chickens staying out

err. what does that mean??

Chx evolve behaviour which is perculiar to their little group and once it becomes ingrained it's hard to break a sort of flock culture.  I have 4 seperate runs with 8 -10 chx in each and they all have their own litlle habits which is on a group basis.  For example I had a young flock of legbar pullets last summer who decided they were going to roost in a tree each night which I actually didn't discover for some while as they were back in the run the next morning.

I kept putting them in the house but they still roosted in the tree every night until the autumn colder weather arrived and they decided they'd just roost in the house.  They knew exactly where they should have been roosting and on wet nights (they even seemed to know when it would rain at night)  they went in the house.  The tree wasn't even in their run but in the next door run.  None of the other birds did this it was just their habit.  I've posted the photo of them in the tree a couple of time on the site if you'd like to see it checkout "Should I leave water and food in the house overnight?"

HF