My chickens are about 10 weeks old now and have been in their new coop for about 3 weeks. At dusk instead of getting on their roosts, they all cram in the corner of coop and fight and push for position. This pushing and shoving goes on for 20 or so minutes until they cease and settle down. I wonder why they do this and not roost? Is this just habit they are used to? The only thing I can think of is that I had them longer in their brooder than I should have and they got used to not roosting........ Anybody else have/had this problem?
none of mine roost at night. I find them on things and resting during the day...both in the coop (on their roosts) and anything around their yard that looks like a roost (compost pile walls, tree buckets, side of the old run...whatever they can sit on they do. But at night...heck no, sometimes in this heat it isn't a pile, just on the ground a near each other. I just keep thinking when they start laying maybe they will chose something else.
They pile right on top of each other, looks and sounds like a rugby match, in the same corner right by the door. I even put their feeder there tonight to no avail, they all piled in right around it like it wasn't even there. I'm kinda scared one of them is going to get mooshed........
Mine do the same thing. They are about 12 weeks old and they all sleep in a big pile in the corner closest to the hatch door. It does seem like someone's going to get squooshed, but so far they are all OK. We built them a lovely 4-foot-high roost across the entire back of the coop (12 feet long), with an old hay shed ladder leading up to it. There's a little poop up on the roost so I know they go up there sometimes, but they do not seem to roost regularly at night. The last few nights I've been lifting some of them up to the roost right at dusk, but it's hard to tell if it's working. They don't seem particularly pleased about it, and Shakespeare, my barred rock cockerel, pecked at me tonight when I went to pick him up. Some of them jump right back down and run to the chicken pile, others seem to stay up there for at least a few minutes. I'm going to try this for a little while longer and hope they get the idea. The funny thing is that some of them definitely have the roosting instinct, especially when it starts to get dark outside. Magpie, one of my BR pullets, likes to jump on my shoulder at dusk, I saw Kudzu (Araucana girl) trying to fly up into a tree, and Liberty (another Araucana) likes to sit on fenceposts right before bed. So I know they have it in them!
Mine were hatched on May 10 and just over the last couple of nites they have been getting up off the pile and into the roosting areas,top of nest boxes and the roosts some are still on the floor in a pile near the door but more and more are roosting.