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Chick-a-play Ft Cox

In the Brooder
Jul 29, 2023
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We are new to backyard chickens. We hatched four eggs my son brought home from the agriculture barn at school and then four weeks later hatched another 11 Easter Eggers that we got from a friend. We ended up with 8 Roosters from those, so we decided to order some female, Rhode Island reds to guarantee that we had egg layers. The first 15 have been in the coop, following everyone’s advice to coop train, for a couple of months while we built our large covered run. We finally let them out a couple of days ago. But they are not returning to the coop at night.

Our coop/run is on a relatives property, a long way from the house and several miles from us. Thus we have worked diligently to over fortify against predators and automate everything. We can’t physically be there every night to put the chickens to bed. Any suggestions would be appreciated. We do check on them daily but just can’t make multiple trips.
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow

You need to train birds to go into the coop at night. When adding young birds to a new coop, I generally keep them in the coop and run for a few days so they learn where home is and how safe it is to sleep there. Chickens will return to the same spot they survived the night before. After a few days I allow them free range options. Or, you can physically catch each bird or lure them into the coop with food in the evening, once they have slept there a few nights, they will come in on their own.

Good luck and welcome to our community!
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

I'll wait for the answers to the questions @N F C asked and to see the pictures of your setup that @janiedoe requested before offering advise. But things to keep in mind: stress will keep a bird away from something. Too many males to females is very stressful. Not enough space or ventilation is stressful.
 
N F C said:
:welcome

Hi, a few of questions...how large is your coop? And is the flock staying in the run overnight or outside of it? Also, do you still have all 8 males?
Click to expand...
Our run and coop are divided in half. Basically we have two 8x4 coops and two runs that are 8 x 25. But it’s all together as one unit. Yes we still have all 8 males for a couple of more weeks. But two are in one run and the others in the Nextdoor run. We are using the next couple of weeks to decide which two we want to keep (again two separate flocks) and the rest will be removed. We plan to hatch and sell baby chicks.

We have been manually putting them all in the coop the last two nights but during the day they are strictly in the run, not outside of it.
 

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