Help with Night time ritual please! Im new!

[aldernay]

Please bear with me - this takes some explaining! I have seven chickens. Four are my original hens. One of the four was always bullied and so when she went broody and was impossible to break I have her some eggs from my friends hens (they have a rooster). She hatched three chicks which are now 11 weeks old. (according to the answers I have had on here under sex identification) the consensus seems to be they are all three boys. Anyhow, mum lost interest in chicks - obviously and all my now 7 freerange. the original 4 hens and the 3 chicks. As mum and chicks had been in a seperate run and coop I leave both coops open at night as chicks were going back to their coop they were hatched in. Mum has taken to going back to her original coop with the other big girls.

Now here is the problem, because both coops are open my original big hens sometimes sleep in their coop and sometimes in the chicks coop, which tends to freak out the chicks. So every night I have to go out and re-arrange the sleeping arrangments becasue 2 of the chicks have taken - every night - to sleeping outside on top of the roof of the run - which is not safe. Its a night time nightmare! How do I get them to all go to their respective coops - or better still start sleeping in one coop? If I shut one coop then all 3 chicks sleep outside on top of the run! Arrrggghhh!

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is a little harder than I first thought it was going to be. I don't know how big your coops are or anything like that. I've had the problem of adults being so brutal on the roosts that the chicks look for other places to roost, usually inside the coop but occasionally outside. This is with brooder raised chicks and broody raised chicks that were raised with the flock and were used to sleeping on the roosts with Mama's protection. When she weans them though, they are on their own and some of the hens can be brutal on the roosts. I often see hens that are lower in the adult pecking order move from their normal roosting spot to where they can beat up on the chicks. I've never had one move from the main coop to my grow-out coop though like you have. That's what makes it harder.

I improved the situation by adding another roost to my main coop, a little lower and a bit away from the main roosts yet still higher than the nest boxes. I don't know if you have room to try that. It's not a perfect solution but it has helped. If your coops are minimum sized, that can be difficult.

If they sleep outside, I just keep moving them into the coop I want them to be in at night. Usually they get the message in a few days but some take a lot longer. Eventually they will mature enough to be able to secure a place in the pecking order, but that can sometimes be as long as 6 months of age or even longer.

It's still a hassle, but maybe you could separate them before bedtime and lock them in their respective runs so they all get used to going to their own coop again. I think your biggest problem is that hen that moves over to their coop so she can be a bully. The chicks are just practicing self-preservation.

I'll mention that I raise chickens to eat, so when I saw one specific hen moving to where she could bully the young ones on the roost, I ate her. It did not help. Another hen that was low in the adult pecking order took up the bullying. My flock keeps changing. Sometimes I have hens that are bullies like this and sometimes I don't.

 

[aldernay]

thank you for taking the time to reply. I dont think there is room in the original coop for another perch. What I find baffaling is that the chicks are pretty much the same size as the adults now and if they are boys then shouldnt they be asserting themselves? I guess it would help if I knew 100% if they were boys or girls as I could try to integrate if I knew (I plan to keep one rooster and any girls amongst the three).

I have tried to seperate them before bed but that always ends up in stress. My original four birds are pretty tame and I can pick them up but the chicks are wild! they hate being handled and when I shake a tin they all come running - so seperating them proves really tricky. Maybe I will see if I can at least catch the big girls and pen them up first. though just to add an extra difficulty - I can put the original four in an outside run locked up as they pick on the youngest (mum of the chicks). they dont seem to pick on her when locked in the actual coop or when free-ranging - just when in the enclosed outside run. Sorry - very complicated.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You get that all the time on this forum. Size is not important. Bantams often dominate full sized chickens. The spirit of the chicken is what is important, not size.

With young chickens maturity is the key. Mature chickens will always outrank immature chickens regardless of size. I've had 15 week old chickens mature enough to stand up for themselves but that is extremely rare. Much more normal is sometime after 20 weeks, occasionally a long time after 20 weeks. Not all chickens mature at the same rate.

Another thing that can hurt you is that mature hens often take great delight in beating up on young roosters. Again size does not really matter that much. Mature hens are dominant over young roosters until the rooster is mature enough to dominate the hen. That varies per individual rooster and per individual hen. I've had roosters 4 months old do OK in this regard and I've seen a mature hen beat up a 10 month old rooster to show she is in charge. This was not really a fight. She just pecked him and he ran away.