Roosting: Weird, Stupid, or Normal

[BigBlueHen53]

In the past, when we've moved our chicklets into the Big Girl coop, they (the littles) do the cuddle puddle on the floor for a while. After about a week, The Man and I go in there and start putting them up on the roosts. In about a week, they start roosting with the Big Girls. One year we had a Big Girl bully who wouldn't allow it. We put her in bully jail for three nights, twice, to break her and give her an Attitude Adjustment. After that, all was well. We are getting ready to move another batch of littles into the Group Coop this week.

 

[Wendy Bee]

We put perches up in their brooder early on. Here they are at 4 weeks in early May, but they were hopping up on perches by a week and a half or two old. They had no trouble transitioning to the coop perches when they made the move .

Jun 2, shortly before the move to the coop (just over 7 weeks):

Moving in day! Early June - it rained a LOT here and delayed our coop building a bit, so they were kinda big when we put them in the coop. The run was not yet complete and they spent their days under the hardware cloth wrapped trampoline and their nights back in the coop. I sure was glad to have them out of the house!

 

[MTKitty]

We put perches up in their brooder early on. Here they are at 4 weeks in early May, but they were hopping up on perches by a week and a half or two old. They had no trouble transitioning to the coop perches when they made the move .

I tried perches in the broody cages in hopes of providing practice and entertainment. They freaked out like they expected the roosts to eat them.

I’ll just have to wait until they figure out night roosting on their own.

 

[Wendy Bee]

I tried perches in the broody cages in hopes of providing practice and entertainment. They freaked out like they expected the roosts to eat them.

I’ll just have to wait until they figure out night roosting on their own.

Yeah, things from above kind of freak them out until they adjust. Once they figured out they could hop up on them, it was all good, lol.

 

[Aunt Angus]

My birds are a mix of weird, stupid, and normal. They sleep all over the place.

• Normal: My rooster, Brahma, Plymouth Rock, Welsummer, Orpington, and one Silkie (when she's not broody, which almost always) roost on the roosting bar.
• Also kinda normal for Silkies: My other Silkie sleeps on the floor.
• Kinda stupid: My production red sleeps on the poop board, of all places. In her defense, she's a rescue and had nowhere to perch for the first 5 years of her life.
• Also kinda stupid: My Cochin perches on the edge of the poop board (the strip of wood that keeps the PDZ contained).
• Definitely stupid: My 3-month-old chicks, a Turken, another Orpington, and an Appenzeller Spitzhauben, sleep in a box I put in the coop for the ducks.
• Normal for ducks: My 4 ducks sleep on the coop floor.

It's a mess.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Putting roosts in the brooder didn't seem to make a difference for my chicks. But my birds were always fortunate to have more experienced birds to copy - even with my first batch, we added more chicks of the same age (7 weeks at the time) and they had learned to roost at the feed store's back lot, so they trained our 7 week olds to roost.

Subsequent batches of chicks in later years simply followed the adults into the coop and onto the roost. None of the chicks were raised by a broody, either.

 

[Disheygirl]

I have a group of three who are five months old and who jockey for the corner position under the other ones on a windowsill. Plenty of roost space in the coop, but they prefer to pile in on a flat wide sill and see who can get stuffed the furthest into the corner. Like they dive under each other to get to the back.

Meanwhile my other five girls roost like normal chickens. Maybe they grow out of it? Chickens are so weirdly entertaining!

 

[Aunt Angus]

I think most figure it out, esp if they have mentors, like @rosemarythyme mentions.

I'm hoping my 3-month-olds figure it out. And it'd be great if my red figures it out, too. I have to rearrange the roost so she doesn't get pooped on. I find that if I put any of the bantams above her, their poop misses her. Forget that there's about 5 feet of unused roost space she could sleep under...

Poor, defective little Jessamine...

 

[junior67]

“cuddle puddle” - love that.

I hope mine catch on soon. I’m thinking about putting a perch over their huddle corner to encourage them. That may be my November project.

I will say when I put the temp small roost in their cuddle corner they just slept all around it for a week or more. Then finally 1 started to use it, then about a week later another one did. Then a couple weeks after that I got a 3rd and a 4th here and there but that was IT. none of the others would use it. so I moved it closer to their normal roosting bar and they all stopped using it and went back to sleeping in their cuddle puddle. So after a couple started using the reg roosting bar I just removed it. Not sure if it helped at all or not but I felt better about trying it.

 

[junior67]

I put a roosting bar in the brooder when they were about 1.5-2 weeks old and they would use it during the day and sleep under their MHP at night. at 4 weeks or so when that was taken out I added another roosting bar in its place. They used both during the day but slept in a cuddle puddle in another corner of their brooder.... So starting a roosting bar early didn't help mine at all.

I had heard of others putting theirs up and getting them used to it so I tried it when they were around a few months old and they FREAKED out (it was dark when I did it so wasn't that they just were not comfortable) so I waited a few weeks and tried again and the same thing. So I figured they would eventually get it. Waited longer then tried again and they were better so did it a couple times but then they were getting stressed again so I just figured I would let them do it when they wanted.