Can you teach an old hen a new roost??

[Country4ever]

My remaining 4 hens are almost 9 years old. All these years I've used a ladder roost that leads up to a window. The one highest on the pecking order always got to sit in front of the window.

Last week, one of my hens couldn't put any weight on her one leg. I have her in a crate and she is doing a little better. I think she hurt herself on the roost. I think the roost is just too high for the old girls now.

So......I put up a new one that has the first step about 1' off the ground and the next one about 18" off the ground.
But the girls won't have anything to do with it. They have been sleeping in the nestbox. I suppose this is okay, but once the injured hen is better, there won't be any room for her there.

they've been avoiding the new roost for about 4-5 days now. Tonight I decided to cover up the front of the nestboxes with a big piece of cardboard, thinking they'd be forced to use the new roost. Wrong. One of them just about killed herself trying to get behind that piece of cardboard. I took it down and let them into the nestbox.

What can I do?
Thanks.

 

[Den in Penn]

Put a platform under the roost set up that you had with a ramp. They like to nest as high as they can. If the new roost was lower than the nest boxes, they will use them to sleep in.

 

[Country4ever]

Hi Den,
My previous roost was about 7' long and 4 and 1/2' high, with about 7 cross boards, making it easy for them to hop up to the top. The problem is when they get down in the morning, they tend to jump to the bottom, or across the coop and sometimes run into the wall/feeder/waterer.
If I do put up a ramp, how wide should it be abd would I put it going up in the center of the whole roost? And I'm not sure they would use it to get down. I'm fearing they would probably still jump down (and bump into things).
And by ramp, do you mean something like a foot wide with horizontal pieces of wood on top of it, from bottom to top?
Over the years, I have lost about 3-4 chickens that were just dead in the morning, at the bottom of the ladder roost. I'm thinking they died because of the type of roost I made for them.
Is it expecting too much of 9 year old hens, to change where they roost? I don't want to stress them too much in their old age!
I only have 4 left. 3 of them handle the big roost fine......but the one who hurt her leg can't.

 

[Den in Penn]

That is the type of ramp I was talking about, Thinking about it, a platform may not help, as mine tend to jump down from it not using the ramp. How high are the nest boxes? Can you lower the nest boxes to near, or on the floor? With the boxes lower the roost wouldn't need to be as high. I'm just throwing out ideas now.