One silkie won't come in at night

[chicorayner]

Hi. I have moved my coop to a larger area and moved all my chickens over. It's a new setup for them but all the chickens (and a turkey) seem to have figured out how to walk up the ramp to the coop at night. All, except one silkie. I find her every evening huddled under a tree and I worry she'll get cold at night. It's getting down to 7 (C), 45 (F) tonight. I haven't trimmed any of their feathers and I notice they often hang out in the coop much longer than the other chickens during the day. Could this be because they have troubles seeing? I haven't raised silkies before. Should I trim all their feathers...could this be the reason the one stays out at night? I go every night and plop her in the coop...she seems content to stay once there but I don't understand why she doesn't just follow her buddies.
Thank you for your advice.

 

[ChickyGirl12]

Whenever I have a chicken doing this I lock them up in their pen for about a week, and as long as they have food and water they wont peck each other. I am not sure how big your chicken house is, or how many chickens you have got, but if the pen is big enough it should work. I have always done this with my chickens. This is also good to do if you ever get new chickens, just lock them up in their pen with food and water for about a week, and the imprint on that pen and always go back to it. I would do this as quickly as possible though, because if she is sleeping on the ground something could easily catch her. I don't know about trimming silkies though because I have none. Another possibility for this problem is, do you see the other chickens picking on her a lot? Maybe that's why? Hope some of this works, good luck!

 

[ChickyGirl12]

Oh, I almost forgot. WELCOME TO BACKYARD CHICKENS!!!!

 

[chicorayner]

Thank you. Great idea! I will try this. I did try trimming the feathers around all the silkie's faces...haha...OMG...that was interesting! Tonight three of the four silkies were huddled together outside. I've just been putting them all in the coop every night but I'm not really interested in hunting for them every night when the snow starts to fly. So I will try to lock them up and see how that goes. All the other "kids" go to bed on their own every night. They have a large fenced run...with overhead netting so they are fairly safe from predators.

I have 8 ISA Red hens, 1 Silver Wyandotte rooster, Three Ameraucana hens and 1 roo, 3 silkie hens and 1 roo. Plus one Red Bourbon turkey.

I was debating on making making a lower entrance for the silkies so they didn't have to climb the ramp...but when the snow flies this will probably be a bad idea.

Thanks for being so helpful.

 

[ChickyGirl12]

Your welcome!

 

[ChickyGirl12]

let me know how it works!