Chickes on Top of Night time coop

[khannalucas]

We are new to the backyard chicken experience. Our dozen chickens are almost 3 months old. Their night time coop is contained inside a fenced in area, about 3 ft off the ground. There is one roosting post, and four nesting boxes inside. Chickens can also get on top of the inside nesting boxes to roost. The night time coop has a rope light that comes on at dusk, and goes off an hour later. There is about 3 ft of space on top of the night time coop where the chickens go sometimes. We have been using the bale size pine shavings from TSC since they came to us at 1 day old, and change it all every week, inside the coop and on the floor of the coop. For the last week, they all have been spending the night on top of the coop, that is inside the fenced area. Is it the shavings? Could there be mites? The inside has only 3 days of use inside, so isn't very dirty. There was another light inside, but after the first day of sleeping on top, the bulb light was changed to a rope light that takes NO space away at all. Do we have a problem with the chickens on top or there something we need to do differently?

 

[Whittni]

Chickens will roost as high as they can, it's common and natural for chickens to do so (in the wild, they higher they are off the ground, the safer they are from foxes and the such). Your chickens are following instincts, you're doing nothing wrong. Put them back in the coop at night every night, until they do it by themselves. You can put a fence on the top of your coop/run so they can't fly up there also.

Have a great day and...

 

[iheartnh]

Whittni is right - they will go as high as they can comfortably roost. When my ladies were smaller, I would find them on a 2x4 my husband put up high on the wall for me to use as a small storage shelf. 2 of them used it until they couldn't physically fit any longer. If you don't want them up where they are, just block it off or put something in the the space.

 

[woodsygal]

Yep, we have to put our rooster in every night. The girls all go in the coop but he gets on the roof until we put him inside.

 

[khannalucas]

Thank you all for your quick responses. Hubby dusted for red mites and changed the 2 day old shavings just in case they had mites or cooties. They look so funny, sleeping with their heads hanging off the edge.