When will chicks go into coop at night?

[Sherloki]

Hi all, yesterday we moved our 21 chicks into their coop and are turning the heat lamp on at night for the younger ones. We have a bit of an age range in our girls I'm thinking our biggest chick is pushing 4-5 weeks while our youngest are around 2-3 weeks. It's warm all day and dips into low 70s at night. Currently the plan is to leave the chicks in the coop for one week to establish it as home and then allow them into a temporary pen during the day until they get large enough to free range.

Will chicks this young know to go inside when it gets dark or will they need to be captured at night? At the moment the majority of them do not like being handled and it was a struggle to get some of them out of their brooder which was a lot more confined.

 

[Henry&Friends]

I kept my chicks in an indoor brooder until they were about 6, maybe 7 weeks old. Then I fenced off part of the coop and run and let them “free range” with the older hens. This weekend I took down the fence, and they all are fine. They followed the older hens in and roosted on the lower roosts, and all I had to do was close the door at night. You might want to wait a week or so, and do something similar, and try to get them used to handling as well.