Chickens are creatures of habit. And they like their own beds. Which makes it easy to train hens to roost in the same building each night.
In the early summer I round up all the winter runaways and shut them into the chook house. And I add all the new chickens .
From the time the last bird enters this large space I count three weeks. Lock down. Over this period of time they bond with each other and their space.
After three weeks I begin to let them out just at dusk. They don’t go far. This gives them a week where they get used to going in and out of the door and back into the henhouse at sunset to roost. The old chooks are always first to bed and the young ones gad about until the last minute but it works.
Sometimes I need Boo to help me herd a few stragglers to bed but this is not necessary after a few days.
Once I trust the flock to return I gradually lengthen their outside time until I am letting them out at lunchtime and locking the doors at sunset.
We are at that stage now. And with all the extra outside time and sun light and greens and dust baths their egg production has increased and all is going according to plan.
Ducks on the other hand sleep wherever they stop.
Have a lovely day!
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Have a great day!..
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
23 responses to “How to Train your Hens to sleep in the Hen House”
I saved a wood pigeon last night. Somehow it got stuck in the fish pond and two foxes were trying to get it,while it flapped it’s wings in terror. I chased off the foxes and managed to fish the poor bird out. It seemed OK but in shock so I put it on a ledge for it’s own safety. The silly bird jumped off the ledge and dived under a bush, where the nasty fox got it! I wish I’d put it in the elder tree, but I was worried it would fall out.
oh no!! That is so disappointing. Poor silly bird indeed and after all you did to try and help, it still ended up being lunch. Sigh.
I suppose the poor thing was so terrified it just wanted to hide.
Or dear me, Mad! What a sad, horrible frustating experience. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed.
Ha ha …and I thought the poor thing was going to be OK!
As readers have been saying, we learn a lot from reading your blogs, Celi. I wonder what the info we’ve gleaned in the last few days would be classified as… physics today or biology? And in Sweaty Corn, the evapotranspiration & photosynthesis cycles, are they botany, chemistry, meteorology &/or psychromity (the study of humidity according to your Aunty Google – & all of our’s too). I avoided studying the sciences in school & university as much as I could, but have found some light forays into various aspects quite interesting over the years. Your tales from the Farmy, whether of animal husbandry or agronomy fascinate me. Thank you for the pleasures.
I learn things here too! Especially with a comment like this. Thank you!
I train my new pullets the same way, but when they’re let out to graze they have a separate enclosure from the Old Girls, so they don’t get bullied all day and all night. The Old Girls know the drill and rush into the chook tractor they move around the grass in, the young ones hold back. Eventually everyone learns to pull together. Love the duck photo. They look like little heaps of snow in the green grass.
Chickens are bullies. Not nice to each other at all!
I definitely learn things here, too. In fact, this blog inspired me to pull out my 1985 college text on Botany, to remind me of the process of photosynthesis. (I am an Educational Retread, constantly learning new things – and forgetting much of it)
Apparently photosynthesis was studied by many individual and isolated chemists and scientists over more than 50 years, before the process was pinned down in the early 1900s. It was finally determined that the process involves water, sunlight, and oxygen, but the electrons from the hydrogen atoms in the water are broken down and combined with carbon to form carbohydrates, which plants use for storage and growth. The water on plant leaves when they sweat or when dew falls in evenings, is new water from the breakdown of water and use of the O2 in carbohydrate chains with the new hydrogen bonds.
Gosh – thank you Katherine. Plants are a fascinating study.
I’m working on a blog about photosynthesis, but it is taking a back seat now, to more pressing issues with the current human crises, involving much of the human world.
Now I wish I could keep hens… Lots of folks living in close by neighborhoods did the backyard chicken thing for some time, until bird flu hit and they lost all their flocks. I really miss the sounds of roosters and talking with the chickens over the fences as I walked by.
Luckily we have not had any mention of bird flu here. Very lucky or they would be inside forever.
For a few years, I dated a guy with chickens. I never thought they had any personality but they do. I got particularly fond of a hen named Ethel. Then we broke up.
Ethel is a fantastic name for a hen!
I am glad for your company on the journey!
I learn something every day. I said so to my step-granddaughter and was told she knew enough and didn’t need to learn anything else. She’s going to have a difficult life. I have been watching the little red squirrels the last e=several afternoons as they run up and down the tree, chittering to each other, scolding the cat that comes on the back porch, hanging on the underside of a branch when the hawk is flying around the yard and struggling with the now ripening walnuts and acorns. At times they sound like a bird singing, which left me with questions when the app Merlin couldn’t identify the what I thought was a bird. The larger red squirrel comes to the screen to see Brat (my cat) and will occasionally climb said screen. Also found that the medieval doctors and herbalists used black hensbane for pain relief (it’s quite toxic and related to potatoes and tomatoes – nightshade family) and that it is invasive here in the U.S. They did abdominal surgery and had some kind of anesthesia for surgical procedures which I have to see if I can find out more about.
the nightshade family gets all the best plants!! We have two squirrels now and they spend a lot of time screeching at the fluffy cat who lies underneath their trees pretending to lounge about . It must be funny to watch Brat and his squirrels!
It is very funny especially when all that separates the big red squirrel and Brat is the screen. They actually smell each other noses against the screen wire, both with tails switching quickly back and forth. Brat vibrates he’s so excited. The little red squirrels just run past the windows on the roof. They’re about the size of a chipmunk but a bit thinner red on top, black stripe on each side and a white belly. I’ve tried to get video of all that but it happens so fast I barely get the phone picked up and it’s over.
That is such a sweet image. Them scenting each other through the screen.
Hey Celi is that hay on the floor in the hen house?
Yes! What they don’t eat they sit on.