Just like wild birds, chickens have the same built-in body clock when it comes to roosting time. Chickens will instinctively know when it’s time to go into the coop to roost based on the light levels. They know that once it goes dark they won’t be able to find the coop which is their place of warmth and safety.
How to train them is simple; just lock them in their coop full time for a few days. For young chickens, lock them in for about 3-4 days and for older hens do 5-7. To do this you need a feeder and waterer in your coop. Chickens need access to fresh water 24/7, and must be fed at least once a day.
One article argued that if you have them in the habit of returning to their “home” (the coop), then it is unusual for the habit to be broken. So why do chickens NOT return to the Coop? What is it that stops your chickens from returning to the coop? Well often it is that they are simply young and haven’t learnt to go into the coop at night. They haven’t learnt the habit.
Do chickens go in the coop at night?
At nightfall, the chickens should start wandering back into the coop to grab a snack and hop up on the roost. If the coop tends to be somewhat dark at dusk, leaving a light on inside will encourage the chickens to gravitate toward the brighter coop as the sky darkens.
Our chickens are almost a year old now, so we don’t have any problem getting them to go into their coop at night, but that wasn’t always the case. When we first put them outside, they would just stand around in their run long after dark.
Yes, chickens that are comfortable will always return to roost, especially at night. The secret to getting them to do this is to make sure the coop is comfy and free of predators.
Do chickens know when it’s time to go home?
So as the day draws to a close, and it starts to get dark, the hens already sense that it is time to go home – to the warmth and safety of the coop. It is true chickens are creatures of HABIT.
One more question we ran across in our research was “What time do chickens go to bed?”.
Chickens lives are controlled by light levels and bed time for your flock has more to do with brightness levels than time. Chickens begin to roost 30 minutes before dark. My chickens go to roost as early as 3:30pm in mid winter and as late as 9:30 in mid summer. How to get chickens to go into the coop at night:.
When can my chickens go outside?
They can go outside at 4 weeks as long as they have a heat lamp. I’m looking to put mine out soon once I have a coop open. I’ll put a heat lamp out there for them and let them have the run of the coop. They won’t be allowed in the run for a while though. We all do it differently.
Should I give my chickens a roost to sleep on?
Moral: please provide your chickens roosts to sleep on! In the wild, a flock of chickens try to get as high off the ground as they can at night, most often in the branches of a tree. They do this to help them stay safe from land predators. What we are trying to do is train the chickens that their coop is a safe place to sleep at night.