Don't close the door!

[MendonMan]

My chickens are fully closed in so I don't open/close the pop door. It stays open. Now with the cold weather (we've had an 18F night already), I've started closing it at night for draft reasons.

Now that I've started closing it, two of the chickens have started a new habit: sitting on the edge of the door between the coop and ramp so I can't close the door. I look in once I know they are in for the night and sure enough, there they sit. This is a completely new behavior and a new place to sit for them. They don't even sit there during daytime hours.

Any thoughts? Should I physically push them out of the way?

I've posted in other forums about cold temps and 99% of responders said with cold-hardy chickens, don't worry about the cold. The run will be covered soon so draft will no longer be an issue.

Charles

 

[bobbieschicks]

My chickens are fully closed in so I don't open/close the pop door. It stays open. Now with the cold weather (we've had an 18F night already), I've started closing it at night for draft reasons.

Now that I've started closing it, two of the chickens have started a new habit: sitting on the edge of the door between the coop and ramp so I can't close the door. I look in once I know they are in for the night and sure enough, there they sit. This is a completely new behavior and a new place to sit for them. They don't even sit there during daytime hours.

Any thoughts? Should I physically push them out of the way?

I've posted in other forums about cold temps and 99% of responders said with cold-hardy chickens, don't worry about the cold. The run will be covered soon so draft will no longer be an issue.

Charles

Haha - that's chickens for you! They will sit in many different places - usually where I don't want them to sit. It sounds like your door lifts up like a pop up book page rather than slides up - is that right? They are probably liking the doorway - it's safe and warm inside. If you intend to close the door - then just give them a little hoist out of the way - they will move - even if they get their feathers ruffled a bit in the process.

I usually close the coop doors even though my coop is completely enclosed in 2x4 welded with hardware cloth at the base. That gives me one more level of security should a smaller animal try to climb up and into the run. I purchased a solar panel and autodoor closer all for around $150 and it was the best investment so far.

I've had chickens roost on the doorway, the ramp, the 2x4 horizontal wall studs and the nestboxes. All the while the lovely manure board with horizontal roosts waited for them to mature and get on it.

 

[chfite]

Some of mine sat in the doorway for a while. I have a guillotine style door. I would drop it lightly on them a couple of times to see what they would do. Sometimes they went in, so I closed the door. Sometimes, they went out. Bah.

Eventually, they all started going into the coop when they got so large that they could not sit there any longer. I added more roosts, since all the new birds decided to roost in the old coop rather than in the new coop.

Chris