Storms and chickens

[yvonne.jones.3597]

I have a question around letting my chickens choose where to sleep.

Due to an expanding flock I have ended up with 2 eglu go’s, one of them is an ‘up’ and 8 hens. As a bit of background-

After some new introductions I had a flock of 4 hens and all were sleeping together in the Go up after settling, so I had an empty Go. I then adopted another 4 chickens from a lady who needed to rehome.

Initially all went as planned with the established flock roosting in the Go Up and the new girls in the Go. However one by one the new girls have started trying to settle in the Go Up at night. I’ve been taking the new girls out of the Go Up and carrying them round to them Go and shoving in them the back door for a few weeks now as I was down to only one of the new girls wanting to roost in their Go and I didn’t want her to be cold and lonely. However she has finally also decided that the Up is the place to be so tonight I went out and found 8 hens squashed into one Go and the other empty!

Omlet guidelines say a max of 4 hens per Go. One of my original girls is a Brahma so she’s a big bird and I thought 4 in one Go was pushing it however up til now there’s been more room as I’ve 2 youngsters but now they are approaching full size.

So my question is, should I leave them squashed in like sardines, (some sitting on others heads!) as they are choosing or should I keep moving half of them every night to the empty house? I know if I was deliberately forcing 8 hens to sleep in a Go I’d be guilty of overcrowding but if they choose to themselves when they have other space available do they know what is best for themselves.

Just to clarify, there is no obvious reason for them not wanting to go in the newer Go, it is clean and no red spider mite etc.

 

I’d appreciate people’s thoughts.

[sjp]

it's partly a good sign that they all want to be in one coop it shows they re guard themselves as one flock not 2. if you want/need them in 2 coops this is the best time of year to do it split them up into the groups you want and them as you would with new intros keep them in the runs for a couple of weeks so they get back into the habit of going to bed in the right coop. that's not as heartless as it sounds this time of year as there's less than eight hours of daylight a day until late January from probably late next week depending on were you live plus days when the weather will be to bad to let them FR. after the 2 weeks I'd be tempted to FR on alternate days for a couple of weeks.

[The Dogmother]

As sjp has said, the space allowed for roosting isn't really critical, although I suspect they will be less keen to overcrowd on hot summer nights

 

What is critical though is the amount of run space they have; we will be under DEFRA prevention measures very soon, when birds will need to be kept in covered runs 24/7, so while they are all in one coop for now, and free ranging, be prepared to split them, and cover the runs with a clear waterproof tarp.

 

On winter days, when there's less time spent out free ranging and more time in the run, they will also need the extra space. You should allow an absolute minimum of 1sq metre per bird in the run, but preferably at least double that.

[eggalp1]

I have six birds (4 big 'uns and two bantams) sleeping in one eglu classic. I also have two wooden coops in the WIR but they all choose to squash into the eglu together so i just leave them to it. I have left the wooden coops in the run as they do use them for laying but its up to them where they sleep; if they're happy, i'm happy I would just leave them to it.