Weird chicken behavior at dusk

[chickengeorgeto]

I have had trouble with my chickens going in at night they have been in their coop and pen for 3 days and they are 8 weeks old and they do wonderful during the day they love it ........at sunset the freak out they huddle up on the side of the coop in the pen as if they can not find the door so we go out there and get in the pen and put in the coop one at a time and then the are in the coop carrying on all huddle up on the door trying to get in the light from outside on the floor or on the door or walls......dont they know it is time for bed????

This statement is not the best way to get birthday cards from those on this forum but chickens in fact know very little.

Consider my problem. I have two pullets I need to catch who are roosting 50 feet up in a pin oak tree. Lacking a break like finding them in an empty pen and closing the door on them I am beginning to think about training a monkey to use a dip net and a flashlight and sending him up the tree after these two juvenile delinquents.

 

[Leihamarie]

Chicks being afraid of the dark comes from them being artificially incubated, if you think about it they have always had a light, even at night.. the best way to prevent this before the chicks go outside is to start turning off the brooder light at dusk for a few days before putting them outside, get them used to the dark

my chicks had been outside in a hutch for several weeks with no artificial light prior to my getting them and I gave them supplemental light (not heat, just a light bulb so I could see in their brooder) during the day in their brooder at home, turning it off in the afternoon to let them experience a natural dusk. No matter what, it sounds like they are being murdered every dusk. They start FREAKING out as soon as the sun begins to set and they don't stop till about 20 min after complete darkness. My little Copper Comet has this SUPER SHRILL "terror alarm" that she sounds repeatedly that makes my ears curl, lol! It was starting to get better and shorter but then I moved them to their coop yesterday. Square one, lol! I have a small solar light strip in there with the panel outside on the roof so they have just a little light to see where they're at for the next few weeks while they adjust to their new surroundings. I can only assume that as they grow and experience many dusk/dawn cycles in familiar surroundings it'll get better.

 

[lazy gardener]

The bedtime ritual is noisy in most coops as the birds bicker about who gets to sleep next to whom! Do your chicks have a perch? They may be reacting to feeling "vulnerable" as night time is a time of vulnerability for chickens. They instinctively know this.