How long does it take your FR chickens to come home?

[chicamama]

Just curious, when I go out to lock the ladies up, usually they are all right there. Sometimes they are nowhere to be found, but will stragle home to my calling. Usualy about 5-15 minutes.

 

[Eggseronious]

I have some young chicks that 6 weeks old, I let free range during the day. They have a shelter but its not their night home, and open dog lot is where their water and feed is during the day. At night Ive been catching them putting them in a box and take them to the barn for total lockup. If im not at the dog lot on time the last few evenings they have started walking up to the house. I have never had this to happen before.

 

[justusnak]

I have one pen of FR chickens. This consist of my older RIR/x and a few new pullets...about 3 months old. Almost like clockwork..the " older generation" will be on the roost by 8 pm. Now the younger generation...they like to party late on bugs...so they dont go in untill 9:00 or so.

 

[penelope77]

mine usually start to pile in the shed around around 8pm. on occassion i have one that will sleep under the shed. the couple of times they have still been out a bowl of food usually gets them to come.

 

[ruth]

My chickens are true free range -meaning no fences at all. We are surrounded by thousands of acres of woods. They wander everywhere and were going deep into the woods. They weren't coming back to the coop to roost till almost pitch black dark. A couple of nights there has been one missing that never returned and we never found any sign of them. So I started "training" them to come back just before dusk. I would go out and feed them and call and put out the treats. I now do this also around mid-day. I took out the feeders and feed them by hand three times a day in their coop/run - morning (when I let them out of locked coop); mid-day; and just before dusk. So now they all kind of stick around and near coop because they don't want to miss a feeding and if they are away they aren't far and come running when they see me come out. I haven't had any more problems at night because by dusk they are all there waiting to be fed and stampeed me when I walk out. I'm able to get them in the fenced run this way but I still have a hard time getting them to go in coop till it's really dark - 8:30 p.m. now that it's summer. I have to turn the light on in coop because they wait so long that it may still have a little light outside but the coop is too dark for them to see to get on roost. I'm more comfortable with leaving them to go in to coop and roost when they feel like it once I have them all in the fenced run and it saves me the trouble of trying to herd them all in. The fence is only 4 feet high and they easily fly/jump over it but they don't tend to do so under this "new" system I have. So far seems to be working and haven't lost any more birds.