Roofed roosting bar at night and that's it...anyone with experience?

[Taranakian]

Well as I have been running chickens for more than 20 years, and am still playing with it...just saying it is a fun hobby.

Defo! It really warms my heart going out there to let the chicks out from their rat proof sleeping shelter into their enclosure for the day. The more I watch them the more I fall in love (the more jealous my dog seems to act - she'll come right, she did with the here and ducks).

Hedgehogs! They seem too adorable to be a threat - that's news to me.

They're so cute I hate killing them! Honestly I'm not certain they'd go after something as large as a chicken egg, but they definitely go for native bird eggs and have done a number on our native insect population.

The first potential problem I see is if you get severe weather any shelter light enough to move around is going to be light enough to get knocked down by the wind. So think about some way to secure the shelters in event of severe weather.

The second problem is that anything in the weasel family are excellent climbers, and one is quite capable of wiping out your flock in a single evening

Third, if you have any owls that sleeping arrangement will make them easy pickings at night.

You bring up a fine point about severe weather. In theory, it doesn't have to be too hard to have a home base where these things go in case of severe weather. Something with posts actually sunk into the ground they can be bolted to and protected as possible from the west, where our severe weather comes from.

I certainly don't underestimate mustelids - they're my primary targets in trapping and I'm pretty good at it. I would have thought that having a sleeping arrangement where my flock is neither confined, nor all in the same place would give better survival rates than if a mustelid got into any closed coop where the birds couldn't escape...?

We do have a native owl, the ruru, but they're too small to try to go after an adult chicken. If they took out some chicks, I would consider them to be strengthening my long-term flock by selecting out birds who didn't have the instincts to seek appropriate protection at dusk/when they're sleeping.

I'm hearing you on the solar, motion-activated lights. I'll look into those right away.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Would you be willing to post the brand name of the one(s) you use?

I got them through Amazon, they're fairly generic make: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NQ4L1SB?ref=fed_asin_title&th=1

Plus if you use corrugated polycarbonate for the roofs they'll let enough light through you can put the lights under the roof and they'll still recharge. It's how I did the roofs on my coops to reflect sunlight (we get HOT here in Georgia), plus it's more inviting to the guinea fowl in my mixed flock (they hate going into places that are dark).

Thanks!

 

[NatJ]

I certainly don't underestimate mustelids - they're my primary targets in trapping and I'm pretty good at it. I would have thought that having a sleeping arrangement where my flock is neither confined, nor all in the same place would give better survival rates than if a mustelid got into any closed coop where the birds couldn't escape...?

That is an interesting point.

A mustelid-proof coop would be safest of all, but if you cannot keep the predator out, then yes you might have more live chickens the next morning if the chickens are sleeping in several different places, and if they have some possibility of escape, instead of having them all shut in one coop and then some member of the weasel family got into that coop with them.