It was strange to see four little heads bobbing round in there, but they seemed to settle down quickly and it was relaxing to watch them start to act more secure and settled.
Miss Milligan is still not too sure about this new place...
I'd expected the chickens to automatically roost on the perch, but ours didn't, they spent the night crowed around the pop hole. So DS and I went up every night after dark (risking walking into cobwebs!) to lift them onto the perch.
We discovered that once chickens are holding onto a perch, it's surprisingly hard to shift them, although now I'm thinking about it, if they're perching in a tree in the wild then they'd need to hang on tight on a windy night.
Daisy May was the hardest to get onto the perch and we'd occasionally accidentally bump one of the other chickens while we were trying and they'd wobble but wouldn't fall off. After all, they do have lovely strong toes to grip with.
After about three weeks of going up to the coop every night and putting sleepy chickens on the perch we gave up. If they wanted to sleep crowded around the pop hole, who were we to argue? They obviously knew more about where they wanted to sleep than we did. A friend told me that you need to put younger chickens on the perch or they'll huddle together and suffocate each other, but ours were old enough to not do that.
Happy dreams, girls.
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