The Merry-Go-Round of Roosting

[ChookaPete]

Earlier this year I reconstructed the sleeping area for my chickens, who sleep inside a corner of my tool shed, sectioned off with wooden pallets and fencing. I set up three wood perches in a rough U shape, with a ladder on one side so they can climb up.
Each section of perch is about two metres long. I've tried to keep them all the same height, and provide plenty of room...

I have a dozen chickens:

• 3 x HyLine hens (Cumin, Cardamom, Coriander)
• 1 x HyLine mother hen (Clover, recently raised two chicks, low on pecking order)
• 2 x HyLine pullets over point-of-lay (Cinnamon, Caraway)
• 1 x Leghorn cross hen (Chamomile)
• 3 x Light Sussex pullets (Martha, Maisie, Marjoram - very timid, very low on pecking order)
• 2 x HyLine chicks (Coffee, Cocoa - about six weeks old)

However it really is a dramatic "merry-go-round" every night when they go to bed. Chooks hop up to the roost, another comes along, one gets pecked, one flies down, one goes somewhere else, one hits the wall, back and forth, back and forth... It's like "There were three in the bed and the little one said "Roll over! Roll over!" So one rolled over and the fell out..."

It seems that they bunch up near the top of the ladder. Whether that's the warmest spot...maybe? But because the chooks higher in the pecking order pick that corner, the lower-down chooks get pecked away.

I have put in some wooden horses that builders use, as lower perches. These have helped the chooks to hop up and go to an opposite perch, but there's still a traffic management issue. It makes me anxious seeing them constantly rotate!


What do I do? Add a second ladder on the opposite side, to break up the bunching up in one corner?

I don't want to remove the 'leg' near the ladder because I had to Dyna-Bolt it to the concrete floor. It was such a hassle to install. There is straw on the floor to catch the poop, which I muck out for compost.



This is the roosting setup, when it was just an L-shape. It has since been modified by adding opposite perch to make it into a U-shape.

The small fork side-branch you see near the top of the ladder was removed earlier today, to try to reduce the bunching-up in that area.

Here the chooks are sleepy but not asleep yet. This was from about a month ago when the weather was still warm, so they are a bit spread out.

 

[Sefirothe]

We call this the nightly roost rumble. I have a mixed bag of 2 and 1 year old hens. And a single 6 foot roost over a poop board. Six of the hens smoosh together in a nightly random order on the actual roost and one single hen perches on the lip of the poop board even tho there’s quite often enough room on the actual roost.

Over the course of the night they usually spread out in warmer weather or stay huddled up in colder temps.

But it’s always a kerfluffle to see who is perching next to whom on the main roost. Every night.

This is usually how the evening starts.

And this is usually how it shakes out and how most of the night is spent.