Happiest at bedtime poll?

[jbtcajun]

There are many different cats.
There are many ways to skin them.
Witch is the best for these?
An explanation of your reasoning would be appreciated too.
JBTcajun

 

[chooks4life]

I found that several tiers worked best for my main coops, basically acting as ladders in every corner leading up to the top tier, which was a grid, not a single bar.

The grid formation allows chickens of every hierarchy rung to roost peacefully together, and the supports that helped hang it from the cage roof prevented any of that nonsense where one chicken always wants to roost at the far right, but always gets up at the far left, always last at night, and then walks along smashing the others off the roost to get to its preferred spot. (You know the sort of behavior I mean, I'm sure, I just generalized to illustrate it better).

I always had more perch length than they needed, as different social groups, and fluctuations in the groups, would dictate that some wanted more distance between them and others at different times. Forcing them all to perch next to one another encourages antagonism.

The rope supports helping suspend the perches from the cage roof weren't necessary, they were more 'just in case' and also specifically intended to prevent chickens from walking from one end of the perch to the other.

That's the setup I found worked best for me and my chooks and turkeys.

Best wishes.

 

[aart]

Depends on the size of your coop, how many birds you have and how your nests are configured.
Ladders can take up a lot of floor space.

I have nests at about 24" off floor for my convenience, roost boards are about 36" with 2x4 wide side up roosts 8" above boards and 12" from walls.

I wish I had room to put the roosts further away from walls because the rooster damages his tail against the wall. Because my coop is only 6' wide I had to put a ramp up to roost boards, and nests, because they were crashing into the wall when flying off roost boards.



My coop is partitioned for isolation and integrating new flock members, it has a lower (24") roost because of 4' width and for newer birds to roost and/or escape once partition is down.

 

[chooks4life]

My ladders at the corners of the cage were not in a straight line, e.g. ///// leading up to the perch, but rather zig-zagged so the birds had to turn around on each perch to face the next rung up. That conserved space but lack of space wasn't really an issue in those coops, they were huge.

Best wishes.