Chicken sleeping on top of coop?

[candychick]

Recently one of my chickens has decieded that at night instead of going in the coop with the rest of the chickens to sleep on top of it. She has always slept in the coop until about a week ago. Since then i have been picking her up and putting her back in the coop. How do i stop her from doing that? i am worried that an animal or racoon will get her.

 

[sumi]

You are going to have to put her in the coop every night until she gets bored or gets the message and goes in by herself. Lots of predators are more active at night.

 

[Daisy8s]

Check for mites or lice in the coop, especially if she had a certain area she always roosted that is different than that of the other chickens. There's a certain kind of mite that only comes out at night. To test for it you wait till after dark and then put your bare arm in/near that space.

I learned I had mites in my nesting boxes one night when collecting eggs long after dark. Lots of little red dots suddenly jumped onto my arm and started crawling around. Pretty awful experience! Since then I treated the wood with Neem oil and then whitewashed. No problem now. (I had always checked my birds over and they never showed any parasites on them because these mites would come out at night, feed on the birds, and then go back into the wood instead of staying on the birds.)

 

[Eggcessive]

She might have had a bad experience on the roost, such as another chicken bullying her, rats, or as the previous person said, mites. The more you put her on the roost each night, she will get into the habit again. You might hang around after lights out just to find out if their is a problem in there.

 

[candychick]

She tends to be picked on by the other chickens, is there a way i can prevent that? and i always collect the eggs and close my chickens in at night so i am pretty sure there is no mites, but i will check anyways

 

[imzadi]

interesting...

I have THREE BARD ROCKS that have decided they really LIKE sleeping on top of the bird house I have by the coop (the swallows that live in it are not aumsed)...

No one else is having issues in that coop...they just seem to like it up there. Is mites/lice the only explanation?

 

[imzadi]

bump...

 

[candychick]

I dont think lice is the thing....my chicken is now back in the coop but another one of my chickens decided to stay on top