Am I doing the right thing??

[LedgeWoods]

I've had chickens/chicks for 8 years...never had an issue like this. I had gotten 18 straight run chicks about 5 months ago. 12 are pullets, 6 roos. They are exploring and digging in the nest boxes, so I know they are getting close to laying. In the last 3 weeks, the pullets have almost continually stayed on the roosts...refusing to go out and free-range (which they did the past 2 months). My guess was that the roos were getting way too aggressive and the girls were sick of being mugged. I culled 5 of the 6 roosters this week. I kept one Americauna roo to watch over the flock - he was not the dominant roo. The last couple days I've pushed them out of the coop - some of them would hide under an evergreen tree, the others would almost immediately go back into the coop. All the chickens look/seem healthy.
Questions:
Could they have had an issue with a predator (hawk?) that's freaked them out causing this behavior?
Were the roos the problem & the girls just need more time to adjust?
If I lock them out of the coop for a couple days, am I going to have issues with them hiding eggs?? (They didn't start laying yet, but they are close.)
Should I isolate the last rooster for a few days?
Other advice??

 

[Kiki]

I'm going to have to say yes a predator could have scared them.
I personally think it is a bad idea to lock them out of the coop, you might end up having problems trying to get them back in to lay.
They might be staying close to the nest boxes for a reason.
I would give it a week or two to see if the problem fixes itself now that you got rid of the extra roos that could have been stressing them.
Chickens don't like change.

 

[Abriana]

Six roosters for twelve pullets? Way too many roos. You only need one for twelve hens. I had a roo that was mean to my hens and they did the same thing-wouldn't come out of the coop and were doing this scared cluck I had never heard before. Got rid of the mean roo and life in the chicken yard returned to normal.

 

[snow5164]

My hens hid and were a scared of the rooster I had... he wasn't nasty to us but he was in the mood ALL THE TIME

Selling him was the best thing I did .....

 

[chickens really]

I think it was the Rooster gang that has them wanting to stay inside...No need to lock up the Rooster...Its fine to lock them out as long as you supervise them...Toss a bit of scratch to get them interested in being out again...If it was a Hawk the Roosters would of been inside too....

 

[Ridgerunner]

I go with the cockerels being the problem. At that age you don't have hens and roosters you have pullets and cockerels. They can be hard to get through puberty. I've seen that kind of behavior before where pullets spend most of their time on the roosts. If it had been a day or two it could have ben a predator but not for three weeks. I've seen that before with a dog attack, but the next day they were back to normal. And I agree the cockerel would have been inside with them.

I see that you have two options. One is to do nothing and let nature take its course. At some point the pullets will start going outside again. I don't know when, it will depend on the personality of that remaining cockerel and their individual personalities. It may happen soon or it may take quite a while, but it will happen.

The other option is to lock the cockerel in isolation until they start going out again. This would probably get them outside faster but it's not my preferred way to go. I try to correct problems but I don't try to micromanage my flock's behaviors. I tend to let them work out issues.

One thing I absolutely would not do is lock them out of the coop. I would not want to teach them to start laying outside. That is a habit that can take some effort to correct.

 

[LedgeWoods]

Thanks for the replies. I'm certain it was all the roos causing the problem. The girls have become much more relaxed today finally. They aren't wandering outside a whole lot yet, but they are at least on the floor of the coop and getting a few feet outside. It seems the roo has figured out that there's no longer competition and he doesn't seem as aggressive to them.

 

[chickens really]

That's great....He has no competition so he can now try to win the ladies over the proper way.....