Another “How do I get my chickens to sleep in the coop” Question

[tlcmurphy]

Tough with the way you've got the extra run attached.
The only thing I can think of is to put the older birds in a separate enclosure for a week or two so the youngers get used to roosting in this coop. There are few good solutions with such a small space.

Yeah, it’s a bummer how it’s set up. We do have an attached run on the other side of the house (that’s where the new girls lived when I got them), I can try locking the big girls there to see if the littles will go in the coop without them there.
That’s the “Chunnel” you see attached to the coop, it connects to the extended run which is much larger

 

[tlcmurphy]

Yeah, it’s a bummer how it’s set up. We do have an attached run on the other side of the house (that’s where the new girls lived when I got them), I can try locking the big girls there to see if the littles will go in the coop without them there.
That’s the “Chunnel” you see attached to the coop, it connects to the extended run which is much larger

It turns out the “kids” just didn’t know the coop was where the big girls went to sleep. I guess they thought they were disappearing nightly and magically reappearing at dawn?

It took a lot of squawking, name calling and chasing, but all 4 are now sleeping in the coop at night