The First Night

The hens were about 16 weeks old when we got them from the local hatchery. We took them out of the box and they were nervous. Me too.

They stretched their necks and tried to get a sense of where they were. There was much walking and looking...and when one of them decided she was hungry or thirsty and went to the feeder or drinker, the others decided they were too and rushed over to join her.

That night, we waited for them to go into their ‘bedroom’ and roost on the perch. I had agonised over that perch, reading everything I could about how high off the ground it should be, what it should be made of, if it should be round or square and what diameter. Then, when the coop arrived, it came with a roosting bar with the brackets already on the walls so all we needed to do was to slide it into place. All that agonising for nothing. 

(This bit is really embarrassing.) That first night we waited for them to go up the ramp to roost. But they didn't and I became convinced they didn't know they were suppose to sleep up there, so into the coop I went and lifted them up one by one and poked them through the pop hole. 

The doorway at the top of the ramp is called the 'pop' hole. My best guess is because the chickens 'pop' in and out of it, but I don't really know. 

They didn't appreciate it. One by one they simply scurried back down the ramp.

“That’s it,” I said to Lovely Hubby. “We’ll have to put them up there again and put a cover over the pop hole to keep them in there.” (I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't know anything about chickens.)

Anyway, while poor Lovely Hubby was finding something to block up the hole, the chickens started to make their own way up. Mind you, they kept coming down again, but eventually they made it all the way up and stayed there.

I learned something else about chickens that evening.