Tiny Lonely Chicken :(

[sushicat2000]

My silkie bantam is the only one of 5 big chickens. It's getting near winter, and I'm worried she'll be alone and cold all by herself. I heard that silkies don't sleep on a perch, is this true? Because then she'll be the only chicken all by herself in the freezing cold! Plz help! should i get a new silkie to be her friend?

 

[FirewifeJess]

Does she hang with the rest of the flock or have they ostricized her? Is your coop draft proof? If she can snuggle down into bedding she'll likely be fine but I'd worry a bit about a lone chicken too. Hoping others will chime in.

 

[powersurbanfarm]

My silkie was the only bantam with 5 other LF birds (a few who are young so slightly bigger than her) and she gets up on the top roost with them. She was best friends with our BO who turned out to be a roo ( as well as our RIR) so we re homed them and yesterday brought home a BO and a GLW as well as another bantam. They all got into the coop last night and our silkie hopped up onto the roost next to our BO and snuggled right into her. I used to have 2 silkies with the LF, but the other one got eaten.

 

[sushicat2000]

The other girls are pretty nice to her. Our speckled sussex is probably her best friend. She sometimes likes to jump up onto a roost with other chickens, and they all stay together. These gals are 8 weeks old, and we are putting them out in the coop today! We live in New England, so I'm just worried about how the winter will affect her. She does snuggle with the other chickens usually, though.

 

[sushicat2000]

I just looked in on my chickens while they were sleeping. All of them were on their roosts, except for the silkie, Fluttershy. She was huddled by herself in a corner with the water. Is this ok?

 

[sushicat2000]

Also that night, I put her up on the roost, then checked about 2 hours later and she was still on it!

 

[FirewifeJess]

I had to train all my chickens to roost; they're kinda dumb sometimes

Every night after they were 6 weeks old I put them all on the roost after dark. They got it after a couple days. Most got it the first night.