Chicken Roosting Habit ** Updated PICS !!! ***

[WildBurroShirts.com]

I have two 4x4 crate/pallets in my run, and also a six foot branch that's mounted between two posts about two feet off the ground.

They are ALWAYS up on everything they can be that's off the ground. Only time they're not on top of it is when it's hot and sunny and they're using the pallets like a lanai for shade.

I think it will be wonderful for them!

 

[johndjones]

I've been raising chickens on and off for most of my life but have never had birds that would not use a roost in the chicken house!!! The roost is made of poles inserted in the wire that surrounds the pen which is covered with a metal roof. The whole flock, 2 roosters and 5 hens...all young ones, just started laying...huddle up on the muddy ground just inside the gate out in the open. If I leave them out overnight in the uncovered run they WILL FLY up on the fence, then a couple of them will end up in the yard next morning!!! I've never seen such behavior. I'm sure there is no way to train them, just gonna have to occur to them one evening about sundown. I am going to build a real house in the next couple of weeks. Maybe when I lock them up in there for a few days of acclimation they will go up on the roosts. The pullets also can't seem to figure out what the nests are for...just lay on the ground where ever the notion hits them, but I'm sure that habit will change with time...beautiful buff orphingtons but these just might be the oddest bunch of chickens I've ever had.