Chicks Under the Deck

[darrylv50]

I live on 26 acres with my house in the middle. I am surrounded by cornfields on 3 sides and a treeline on one. I let my 9 girls freerange every day from morning until dusk. They are happy and good layers. We have had an early winter here in southern Michigan and I wondered from reading others comments that their chicks are only out a few hours a day. Am I wrong to leave mine out for so long. They don't seem to mind. We have a large deck on the back of our house and they spend most of the day when it is snowy under the deck in the dirt. My 3 Wyandottes do not want to come out at night to go in the coop and roost. I think of all of the girls they hate the snow the most. Please advise. Thanks, Darryl
Goldie, My beautiful Golden Wyandotte

 

[chfite]

I don't have much experience with snow, but would suggest making a path from the deck to the run so that they don't have to walk in the snow.

Chris

 

[darrylv50]

I have done this but the three of them just look at me like "Are you crazy, we don't want to walk down that hill in that snow." I guess they forget they walked up the hill to get to the deck. The other 6 (4 Reds and 2 black satin sex links) just waddle on down to the coop. We have a retaining wall beside the deck and they will fly to the top of the wall and make quite a production of sitting there until one will finally fly down to the coop then the other 2 will follow. We have so much snow today that I just shoveled around their coops put down lots of fresh straw made them oatmeal and beans and opened the coop door so they could just come out in that area.