Can chickens retain sleeping habits from chick age?

[PhantomSlayer]

With a mixed flock with up a months age difference I can't help but find this particular situation kinda weirdly cute. And have been considering asking about it.

Our runt was switched to a divided brooder and raised up with 2 brahmas and later addition of 2 easter eggers. As she wasn't fairing well with the others her age. While she seemed to have a big connection to the brahmas the easter eggers for a while relied on her if the brahmas werent around and now that their older the easter eggers have been going off on their own thing and while we did sadly lose one of the two brahmas to a fox the behavior I only occasionally noticed before has become a full time behavior.

Around 9:30 is lock up time for our now flock of 11 and 2 geese.

After making a nesting box which one larger box sits on the floor and 2 in the air the favored box is unfortunately the bigger lower ground box. And not only for layers but bed time. In particular the eggers fancy the top shelf however the brahma and the runt fancy the bottom. And almost every night now I find them in this same and weird but cute position.

I have tried to fix our nesting box sleepers by switching out the bedding but it only fixed the easter eggers sleeping habits for a few days before they returned and just didn't care lol. While the picture is older before I switched from straw to shavings it continues to happen and I have given up the fight and have opted to more frequent clean outs of the nesting box. Anyways..

Is this odd sleeping position of the runt and the brahma possibly a comfort thing from when they were chicks? The runt is 3 weeks older. But every night I go in and low and behold shes sitting ontop of the brahmas head. I don't think its a cold temp thing as even on days where we maintained hot nights they did that which worried me cause I can only imagine how hot it must be.

The runt will not fly up to the roosting bar. I have only caught her once on it and never since.

So could this be a comfort thing? Should I try to fix it? Or should it be left alone if it doesn't bother me? I'm unsure.. I'm not worried about the dirtying of the nesting box since i've given up to that but for the sake of the runt and brahma I'm just not sure if its an okay thing for them to sleep everytime like that lol

 

[azygous]

Of course chickens can retain habits formed as babies. I see this all the time. When they do this on a perch, it's especially comical as it often results in one being pushed off the perch. To take it even further, some of my adult chickens love to cuddle in my lap. Often they will jam their heads under my jacket or arm pit where they bliss out for as long as I permit it.

You can ignore this behavior or take steps to encourage roosting. It would involve blocking this nest off at bedtime and placing these two on a perch. I find it easy to perch train chicks. When they object to being stranded on the perch, I place a calming hand over their neck and head, exerting slight downward pressure. This actually calms them and encourages them to relax. It takes no more than two or three nights of this to get them used to roosting.

 

[PhantomSlayer]

In the brooder we had a small roost set up. And the older ones before we got geese had a dog crate which we used wooden dowels stuck through to the other sides for roosting. But before the brahmas, easter eggers and the runt were off the heat my mom got her geese who took over the dog crate. I didn't think about the roosting issue since we had the small one in there but maybe the runt didn't get to use it since it was only big enough for maybe 2-3 juveniles.

If its not dangerous to the health of those two I'll probably just ignore it for now. The only time I can think of it becoming an issue is if one of the others go broody. We left that two times as big for two reasons bigger nesting box area and a place to move a broody girl to if needed. Its become their favorite nesting box as well.