Chicks sleep UNDER the coop at night

[dkubarek]

Hi all,
I built a very nice and cute coop with the help of my woodworker friend and included a run area that goes under the raised coop. They love it but the problem is my 6 week old girls use the coop to eat and hang out when they get scared but sleep under it at night.

The slept fine in the coop but as soon as I opened up the run area that was it. I'm afraid that when it gets colder they won't know to go inside. Should I correct this behavior? I'm thinking of putting a piece of cardboard over the area until they figure it out. Or, will they know to go inside and I'm just bugging over nothing?

Nights are near 60F in Pennsylvania.

 

[kichohana]

How old are your chicks? 6 weeks? Fully feathered? If they're feathered they'll be warm enough. I can only assume they're sleeping huddled up on the ground under the coop. No harm no "fowl".

If you close off the area, they will change their behavior as they will not have access to it. I had to put my original chicks, all 6 of them, one by one, in their coop at night. It took about a week before they got the hang of it. The nest boxes were closed off so they wouldn't sleep in there either. It didn't take them long to figure out that they liked being up on the roosts, and that the higher up, the better.

With my second batch of 3 chicks, mama taught them how to get up the ladder into the coop at night, but they slept with her in a nestbox. Recently, I had to sequester one of them (5 week old) for a week because she got picked on - badly. Her wounds healed, and in her time in the hospital box, she learned to roost at night, 'cause she didn't have a mama to snuggle with. I put her back with the flock tonight and she hopped right up there on the roost with the big girls like she belongs there. I will be monitoring this to make sure they're all right. (I did move the bully hen out).

They'll figure it out. It's in their nature to roost at night up high away from "predators". I would close off the area under their coop until they've figured it out. It may take some help on your part. If you have to move the yourself, do it at dusk or dark. Their eyesight is horrible in the dark. They wake up in the coop and think "this must be where i'm supposed to be".

good luck!

 

[chfite]

I added 5 RIRs to the flock. At first they slept on the porch of the coop. This persisted until they got to be too large to roost comfortably. The kept knocking each other off the porch. After a month or 6 weeks they started sleeping inside. Now they did this on the other coop. There are two coops in a common run.

They had their own coop in a common run area. They don't even go into it any longer. After they were kept in the separate area for a month then integrated, they slowly quit using their coop altogether.

I moved their feeder into the other coop, because everyone of them is using the sole coop.

Now I have a coop that essentially is used to store pine shavings.

Chris