Greetings from Zambia

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Ndaye

Ndaye

Hatching
May 19, 2016
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Hi guys!.
I have a problem.
My hens won't just sleep in their Coop for some reason. Instead they chose to sleep on top of it. The only time they ever go inside the coop is to lay eggs, which they never sit on ever!. So what I did was, I built a 4mX4m chicken run and placed the coop in there. I did this cause I thought if I put them in a closed surrounding were they get to be near the coop, they'll eventually get the idea of were to sleep and were to find the eggs. But instead nothing has changed. They still behavior the same. Lay eggs in the coop and sleep on top of it. This has been going on for weeks now. Im new to this. I have little knowledge on how to handle backyard chickens especially for reproduction purposes. I cant help but feel the 10eggs currently sitted in the coop will go bad.. Any help would be much appreciated. I have four hens and two roosters.
 
Hi and welcome to BYC -great to have African-based member onboard with us.

I'd suggest posting your question on the issue of not sleeping in the coop in the "Managing your flock" forum.

As for the egg issue - not all hens will brood their eggs. Even those breeds that do go broody will not necessarily do so often. I'd suggest collecting the eggs and eating them.

When a hen goes broody, it means that hormonally she is ready to sit and hatch eggs. Some breeds go broody often, others not at all (typically commercial breeds, where a break in egg laying is not desirable) and some now and again.

When a hen begins to go broody, she will stay longer in the nest when laying her eggs - the duration increases with each day, until she decides its time to sit on the nest (regardless of whether there are eggs there or not) and will not roost with the flock. If you try and approach her, she will likely screech at you and puff her feathers up in an attempt to defend her eggs (and maybe give you a good pecking as well
smile.png
). She will only get off the nest occasionally to poop and eat / drink a little and will be in one heck of a bad temper.

A rooster can readily handle around 10 hens, so you may want to consider getting rid of one of your roos, and getting some more hens.

You'll find lots of info in the Learning Centre
https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center, and if you have a specific topic in mind, just type it in the search box - there's a wealth of information on past and present threads.


All the best
CT
 
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