Maybe my chickens are the exception, but when I've walked into the coop during bad weather, there are chickens on the coop floor. It's like walking onto a house full of people that are doing all different things. A couple might be roosting, somebody might be laying, but others are eating, drinking, wandering around, scratching in the litter, standing around, dust bathing or even lounging in the shavings. Mine use the whole coop. If it's a nice day outside, they're outside. If it's horrible outside, they're inside.
When the high for the day is well below zero, they spend more time indoors and wait for it to get warmer. When there's a foot or more of snow outside the pophole, they wait for somebody to come shovel it. Until then, they do their usual chicken activities, inside.
Other than the idiosyncrasies of individual chickens, I don't know which factors effect how active chickens are in the coop. I always figured that in places with better weather, the chickens would be outside most of the time. Our coop has big windows and we've always used supplemental lighting during winter. In a darker coop, I would think chickens would be much less active. We've also always had their food and water inside. We've never had a covered run, although I'm thinking about that for the future, like a little porch for rainy days. It would cut down on the shoveling, too. As it is, it's either brave the elements or hang out in the coop. I usually start brooding in the house and finish up in the chicken housing. Maybe brooding in the coop makes them more conditioned to using the coop as a living space, instead of just a sleeping space. From my experience, it seems odd that other people's chickens would roost all day, if they weren't outside.
