Pullet or Rooster?

[Jessa83]

I have three pekin x pullets, aprox 3 months old. Lately they have started sitting ONTOP of their coop for a few minutes each night before going inside... Is this normal? Is this what roosters normally do?

 

[chooks4life]

Hello and

Chickens normally have a drive to seek the highest perch they can get to for safety's sake. If they keep going onto the roof chances are they'll end up deciding to stay there. They may not, it's a good sign they're still putting themselves to bed.

Some chooks like to explore vertically, so do some turkeys, in my flock I always had those who had to walk all over the roof and the rest never did, if anything it was the females that were more likely to lead the exploration. I did have one rooster who liked to perch higher than the hens, but the rest of my roosters didn't, and I've had far more hens perch in that same spot before and since. I think it may just be an individual preference. I used to have one little hen who would keep climbing, and climbing, and climbing until she was about 100 feet off the ground in the tallest trees she could scale. Some very windy and rainy nights changed her mind.

There's nothing specific about roosters or males that makes them more likely to perch on top of a roof beyond perhaps training, i.e just the fact that many people tend to handle them less so they're flightier and aren't retrained to perch in cages unlike any hens who try to sleep elsewhere. Flighty chooks who still have enough brains (not the most common combination there) tend to learn to avoid cages. If they're truly human-averse as some are they will try to avoid being in cages as much as possible, whereas other chickens love their cages and even get jealous about them.

Best wishes.