Help with night time coop routine

Bri85

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I have 7 month old laying ladies plus a few new ladies learning the ropes. I have a large enclosed run attached to a coop. I can’t get my young birds to follow the flock in at night. The problem with locking the young ones in would be how
Do my laying chickens lay when I lock the others in?! I live in so Cali and it’s really not that cold! Do I care if they go in?!
 
You may need to physically place them in there for a few nights to learn the routine. Roost time is normally when the younger/lower ranked birds get pummeled for trying to roost with the older birds, so they could be apprehensive about going in. This is becomes more of an issue if your coop in undersized (ie. less than 4 sqft/bird).
 
Is it a larger walk-in style coop that they use at all during the day (besides the older ones when they go in to lay an egg), or a small coop that's only ever used for nesting and roosting? Asking because I'm wondering if the younger birds are used to being inside the coop at other times or if it's still unfamiliar and feels like the older girls' territory.

Is there enough space for them to roost as separate groups, and for the younger ones to get from the door to a roost without having to run a gauntlet of being pecked by the older birds?

One thing you can try to encourage chickens to roost in a particular place is to put a light there a little while before the time they'd go to roost. (Just a little torch or camping light or similar is fine - make sure it's somewhere you can easily access to take it out or switch it off without disturbing the chickens once they're roosting.) The light itself can attract them and it can also make it easier to navigate a space they're not all that familiar with, if they were struggling to find a roost in the darkness of the coop. Sometimes it can encourage the younger ones to go in earlier and snag a spot before the older ones come in, especially if one of them is positioning themselves as 'guard chicken' by the door.

But if your weather isn't that bad and you're happy that the run is secure enough to provide as much protection from predators as the coop, you could just let them continue to roost outside for now.
 

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