hen with bad habit!!

[SaltandPenny]

I haven't been on here for so long, I have a hen with a bad habit I need to break ASAP. My hen (Eclipse) started laying 4 days ago. On the second day, I couldn't find her egg, so I was walking towards the coop and saw an eggshell and yolk on the ground. My chickens sleep in the tree above their coop. I looked up and saw my hen right above where the egg was. She laid while she was in the tree! I thought she was just not wanting to lay in a nest box, so I brushed it off. But today she laid in the tree again. So I thought I would take it to backyard chickens. Please, we need to make this behavior stop.

 

[sourland]

Any way that you can convince them to start sleeping in the coop? Sleeping in the tree they are vulnerable to predators - especially the Great Horned Owl.

 

[azygous]

Yes, they obviously don't feel the coop is "home". Your hen is quite young, so this behavior can be corrected. But you need to do it ASAP.

What I recommend is to round up your flock and install them in the coop with plenty of food and water. Then close them in for several days to a week. This should re-program them to associate the coop with a sense of security.

Otherwise, what you have now is a wild flock with no control over them.

 

[mtngirl35]

Yes, they obviously don't feel the coop is "home". Your hen is quite young, so this behavior can be corrected. But you need to do it ASAP.

What I recommend is to round up your flock and install them in the coop with plenty of food and water. Then close them in for several days to a week. This should re-program them to associate the coop with a sense of security.

Otherwise, what you have now is a wild flock with no control over them.

I agree. This is how I teach my young chickens that the coop is their new home. Otherwise they keep trying to get in the broody pen that they have outgrown.