Help with roosting please!

[Mixedbirdies]

So I built these roosts one higher than the other and my older chickens get on top and peck the younger ones! Then the younger one have to get off and sleep on the ground! Is there a way to stop this? Is sleeping on the ground bad for them?

 

[R2elk]

So I built these roosts one higher than the other and my older chickens get on top and peck the younger ones! Then the younger one have to get off and sleep on the ground! Is there a way to stop this? Is sleeping on the ground bad for them?

This doesn't happen if the roosts are built properly. I use numerous roosts that are built at staggered heights but they are also offset and they are not close enough to each other for chickens to reach from one roost the the other. They are close enough that a small jump is required to go from one roost to the other.

By having them offset, it also prevents the ones on the higher roosts from crapping on the ones on the lower roosts.

 

[Mixedbirdies]

This doesn't happen if the roosts are built properly. I use numerous roosts that are built at staggered heights but they are also offset and they are not close enough to each other for chickens to reach from one roost the the other. They are close enough that a small jump is required to go from one roost to the other.

By having them offset, it also prevents the ones on the higher roosts from crapping on the ones on the lower roosts.

Thank you!

 

[Howard E]

If you look at poultry husbandry books written over 100 years ago, even then they knew / found that the ladder style roosts that are iconic and cool looking are a bad idea, and for exactly the same reason you discovered. The birds all seek the highest roost they can, and will fight with each other to get there. So the best solution is to make them all level.....or at the same height.

Back in the day when nearly every farm kept a flock of chickens, as well as large numbers of back lot chickens in urban settings, proper housing for chickens was recognized as an important component of success. It had been studied extensively. What was true then is true now......and today is mostly ignored. We seem determined to reinvent the wheel......and it keeps coming out square.