Chicken perches

The hardest thing about
making the switch from chicken
tractors to a chicken
pasture is that our tractored chickens were not keen on the idea of
roosting in their coop!  I was excited to be collecting their
manure in a deep
bedding of straw and autumn leaves, but the flock didn’t
cooperate.  Instead, they roosted here and there around the
pasture, happy to enjoy the warm autumn days.



Mark tried everything he could think of to get
them to perch inside, but finally cold weather did the job for
us.  Soon, we had a flock perching just where we wished they
wouldn’t — on the edges of the nest boxes so that they pooped all
over the clean eggs.  Yuck!  Didn’t we convert over to the Avian Aqua Miser specifically to prevent
handling chicken poop?



After testing out
several different options we discovered that our flock cared about only
one thing when choosing their indoor perching location —
height.  Despite what many people report, branches and lumber are
equal in the eyes of chickens.  All our chickens really seem to
care about is being as high up as possible.  Once Mark lowered the
nest boxes and raised the roosts, the chickens were finally settling in
for the evening just where we hoped they would.  Now we have warm
chickens, clean eggs, and deep litter composting for next  year’s
garden — perfection.