my chickens can't get down from their roost!

[Akane]

Some of mine roost at the top of a 16' high building and have no issues getting up or down. The roosts are all around 4-6' high but the lighter built ones will climbing the 2x4's along the wall to get higher. Yes there is flapping and sometimes quite a bit of noise when they all hop off in the morning but it seems normal to me. Chickens start squawking and flapping about for sometimes the silliest reasons. You should see when I haul in a new feed sack or start throwing bags of bedding in the coop. You'd think the coop itself was suddenly trying to eat them. They bounce around from wall to wall like pinballs making a huge racket until they find their way to the door and wait until I'm done moving stuff around to come back.

 

[trasko]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies. I found an older picture of the coop that is pre-platform. Don't mind the cat -- the birds push her around and don't fear her at all.

This weekend I plan to cut a hole they can jump out of into their run and a ramp that leads down to it. Hopefully they'll go for that.

 

[joebryant]

Start over. Revove all the nest boxes and roosts. Then put them all in the way they were supposed to have been from the beginning.

 

[Reinbeau]

Quote:
They look hot to me - mine look like that lately, it's blistering out there, they aren't making a sound. Just sayin'.

To the OP, they need a way to get down, like a ladder of some sorts.

 

[goldeneggtees]

Yea, I must have been drinking when I saw that pic, I looked again just now and they do look hot - OOPS!

Quote:
They look hot to me - mine look like that lately, it's blistering out there, they aren't making a sound. Just sayin'.

To the OP, they need a way to get down, like a ladder of some sorts.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Gotta agree with that. Whoever designed that coop musta been confused about the distinction between chickens vs helicopters

The point here (commenting on some other posts in the thread) is not the HEIGHT of the roost and boxes, per se, it is that there is next to no horizontal room for an angled ascent/descent. Descent in particular. Obviously chickens can fly up pretty high, and down again, but not in the equivalent of an elevator shaft <g>

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[trasko]

If I get home early enough tonight I'll attempt a fix. I'll even snap some before and after pictures for keeping me company w/ this BS.

Did I mention I've been picking our 4 birds off the perch each morning? Haha, they don't really like it but they also know they aren't getting down any other way. Too funny.

 

[trasko]

I added a couple of ramps yesterday and finalized everything today. When I went outside this morning the chickens were running around in their coop so they managed to get down somehow.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[Reinbeau]

Ha! Looks like an MC Escher print!

It muse have worked, though, good job!

 

[Chilebound]

I posted just about the same question last week. Mine are about 6' up also, and I have constructed a great latter that they use just fine to get up--but wont use it to come down. They fall/dive down and it sounds terrible, bumping and thumping, squaking and such. Even my roo was limping for a while and I assumed it was because of the dimounting proceedure. I had simular comments to the ones you have so far received--and instructions to lower the roost bar etc. They love it high, and I think it affords a bit more protection from a few preditors (it also allows me to be able to walk around in the whole coop). So in the end, I have left it high and they can either use the latter, or not! Chickens are not the smartest. so, I let them fall down etc.....and dont worry too much about it.