Welcome!
Mine love scratch. There's only one place in the whole world they can get served scratch, and that's in their tractor, so when I shake that gallon plastic jug with scratch in it, they run straight to the chicken tractor and jump inside. They know no scratch will ever hit the earth outside that tractor, and they want their scratch NOW!!!
So make a habit of only serving their treats in places you want them to run to, never just thrown randomly on the ground. If you just throw it anywhere, you just gave up the best training trick I know of.
If I have to leave before it's time for them to go to roost, I'm very glad I have a fast, reliable way to get 13 little dinosaurs, back in the tractor, or in your case, maybe a run, or coop.
By the way, if you wanted to make a chicken tunnel, say for example 50 feet long, and yes, chickens use them with no problem, here's what you do.
Roll out a 50 foot section of 4 foot by 50 foot of half inch hardware cloth. Then roll it the short direction, lap it about 4 inches, and using zip ties, every foot or so, zip tie the lap. For a picture in your mind, think of it as rolling a 50 foot long cigarette, with the empty air of the tunnel where the tobacco would be. By the way, you can also buy 4 foot hardware cloth in 100 foot rolls.
Watch out for Home Depot, I don't know what's wrong with them. They're selling a 25 foot roll of 4 foot hardware cloth for $58, you can get a 50 foot roll with free delivery from
Walmart or
Amazon for $61.
What the heck! Home Depot is trying to sell half the wire for the same price?!!! Pays to shop around!
Easy trick on zip ties, when you're trying to zip tie something you can't get to both sides of, like the lap of this 50 foot cigarette, is take pliers, put a crimp in the last inch of the zip tie, so it's forming a V, shove the V into the 4 inch lap in the hardwood cloth, then pull back on the zip tie, which brings the end back out of the hardware cloth, naturally, make sure not to bring the end out the same hole you pushed it into, then zip it.
You've now got a great tunnel, with no sharp edges, because you rolled it the long way, and your lap edges are smooth, because you didn't have to cut them.
If you need an elbow, make one with the wire, then insert it between two straight lengths, and you've got a curve or elbow, whatever you want.
Don't over think it, zip tie it to the pens on either end. Don't bother with staking it or anything else, it's not necessary, it's really that simple. The chickens are quite comfortable with exploring a hardware cloth tunnel, they want fresh ground to forage, they will use it.
Here's another thread on tunnels. There's a very cute video with it.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/build-a-chunnel.915854/
