Silly chicken.. get out of that tree.. AND.. where did my eggs go??

[chantald]

A two part post..

Part 1...
I have had these chickens for 6 months now. For the entire time they have lived (give or take a week or so for this particular batch) in their coop in the back yard. The day is the same.. They rise with the sun, wander around their run, I let them out, they wander the yard, the sun sets, they return to run, are closed in for the night..
Except the last two days.. when one silly chicken has decided that roosting in the tree near the coop is a MUCH better choice.. Silly Ancuna.. I mean really.. had it not been for our little bantam rooster who flew up there and pecked at her and crowed his heart out the first night.. I would have never even thought to look up and see her..Now my nightly ritual is to shake the tree until she flies out, then the rooster follows her (he always joins her in the tree to try and get her out) and then they go into the coop and I close it up.

Why all of a sudden is this particular chicken doing this?

She is a pain in the neck this chicken.. pretty.. but flightly and now this.. I've a mind to find a trade for her..

So.. why is she doing this and how do I stop it (if i can..)


Part 2..
I have 1 laying hen.. I have 8 hens total but only 1 is laying now.. There are 3 hens who are 2 weeks older than this hen.. they are not laying (they are all around 6 months old) and a few hens who are a month younger.. they are not laying.. hello?? older hens..?? where are my eggs?
So, this hen has been laying 1 egg every day.. except the last two days.. nothing.. Where are my eggs??

They do free range.. so who knows.. but she has some lovely nesting boxes.. with faux eggs in them...

 

[debilorrah]

Chickens will do what chickens want to do. That answers number one.

Chickens will lay when they are darned well ready to lay.

From experience.....

 

[Emzyyy]

Yes we couldn't figure out where our eggs we're going and then one day we went to turn the hose on behind the bushes and 21 eggs behind the bushes, after we found that bunch she started trying to lay them on my dad's work bench.

 

[Beekissed]

1. Clip one wing of your adventurous one.

2. Keep them in the coop until late afternoon for a week or two, to retrain them to lay in your nest boxes. Are you sure you aren't going through a molt? The eggs get a little sporadic during that time and 'tis the season....

 

[priszilla]

I have a tree girl- and now all the big girls and the girl turkey and top roo are up there too grrrrrrr- I clipped one wing already-- next job-- remove their "step" to the tree- 2 hutches under the tree,and lowest limbs

 

[pixiechic]

We had a few tree-roosting chickens too - especially BRs, araucanas, and SLWs. It was kind of neat to see them up there, but I worried about predators. Here's what helped:

1) Shake or push them out of the tree religiously every night. Eventually they get the idea that they need to roost in the coop instead.

2) Clip one wing on each of the offenders. This only worked on our barred rock roo, it didn't ground the girls much.

3) Cut off all the lower branches of the tree they like to roost in, so they can't get up there. When we did this, they found a couple more roosting trees, so we had to cut the bottom branches off of those too -- but this has been the most effective.