UPDATE!After 3 days locked in chicks STILL won't go in henhouse YIKES!

[socks]

Hi, another newbie here who has just moved her chicks to the coop but won't be able to lock them up in it all day because it is too hot there in the afternoon. (It was a compromise between cool mornings or hot mornings so I chose cool mornings for when they will be laying....in the process of making a covered run for shade).

I was just thinking about your comment:

they also aren't big table scrap eaters, they look at the lettuce we put there like it's a totally foreign object

and wondering if they are similar to my chicks who absolutely love lettuce and the like as long as I tie it up and suspend it so that they can tear bits off. If I leave a leaf around they just ignore it. Some day I expect they will discover they can use their feet to hold something down (or not, who knows) but the tying the stuff to the hardware cloth works every time and is my current reward when I bring them in at night.​

 

[socks]

and by the way, lovely coop!

 

[hennypennysmom]

and by the way, lovely coop!

socks: thanks!

and thanks too for the remark about scraps. that cracked me up - our girls LOVE watermelon - IF you hold it up for them! if you put it down on the floor they kind of look at it suspiciously...they might peck at it a bit, but you pick up that SAME piece of watermelon and they are like "WOW! THIS WATERMELON IS TERRIFIC!". i guess they will get the hang of things as they get older...i keep reminding my husband that they are still babies!

i put them into the henhouse tonight - they were chirping away at me - not pleased at all. but they settled down quickly and went to sleep. hope that eventually they will go in themselves - i'm thinking we don't want to have put them in there every winter night too....

they are worth all the worrying though - we are having so much fun with them!

silly chickens!

 

[cmom]

I shut my birds in their coop for a few days. Also every evening about the time I would want them in the coop I would take some treats out to them and give them the treats in their coop. After I let them out I continued the treats in the coop in the evenings. They started going into the coop at night and I would shut their pop door after everyone was in for their treats. I gave them scratch grains as I tried bread which is one of their favorites but they would run out with the pieces. Slowly I cut back on the treats. Now they go in their coop before dark. In the beginning I would round them up and put them in their coop but that got old pretty quickly.

 

[littlegip]

It took us about 3 nights of putting them in the coop at dusk the 4 night ,we was watching from kitchen window and after about 10mins of peepin they went up..was so cute i wanted to help them again but hubby was saying wait ,wait they will do it and they did .good luck with your babys .

 

[socks]

Here is another totally untested idea but I was thinking how if you have roosts up higher than the bottom of the chicken house they might be choosing that because they usually want to sleep in the highest spot....wondering if you limit access to higher roosts for awhile ( or um...you know, convince them the sky is falling down ...

)will they naturally choose the coop because it looks like the highest spot???

just thinking here, not experience.....as I write my husband the non-builder is making a sliding pop hole after I showed him a few pictures from byc.....wish us luck!! He likes to 'just do it' and fix it later, I like to research and think the thing through....guess what we argue about most

(but mister 'just do it' does get more done than me

)

Tomorrow we get started on the run and I can stop taxi-ing the chicks to the chicken tractor. The good thing about all this taxi-ing is that they seem to finally be getting used to me picking them up and there is less of the 'she's going to kill me I just know it!!! Hellllllppppp!' stuff.

 

[hennypennysmom]

socks: hmmmm. that's an interesting idea. once again, i had to take them off the run roost and put them into the henhouse. they were making a HUGE racket - and almost immediately jumped up on the roost in the henhouse! oh, those silly chickens. i could have my husband take out the roosts for a while and see if that makes a difference. i am wondering if the ramp needs more rungs - i'm going to mention that to MY "just do it" husband - he'll be thrilled! he's done an amazing amount of work though, so i shouldn't complain!

thanks for the idea....