On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:03:33 GMT, "0tterbot" <spl@t.com> wrote:
><dh@.> wrote in message news:muqp13h53cou02o7tid71bumtovcotqr2l@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:55:04 GMT, "0tterbot" <spl@t.com> wrote:
>>
>>>serious question!
>>>
>>>no matter how quiet i try to be when closing them up for the night, the
>>>little blighters are all awake.
>>>
>>>i am starting to wonder if they're like cows & hardly ever actually sleep,
>>>just rest.
>>
>> They do sleep, often with their head tucked under a wing.
>
>how cute :-)
>
>>>my three youngest chickens still don't roost, either. i made them a spiffy
>>>new house with two lovely roosts, & all they thought about that was to be
>>>sure not to bump their heads. they all sleep in the nesting box. i don't
>>>know why i bother. apparently they'd have been perfectly happy if i'd just
>>>made them a nesting box with a door on it ;-)
>>>kylie
>>
>> How old are they?
>
>hm, about 6-7 months now, i think.
It's probably too late then.
>Young chicks are taught to roost by their
>> mothers as soon as they are big enough to do so.
>
>they came from a poultry farm - it's not clear to me if the babies are kept
>with mothers or all brought up artificially.
I've never heard of a commercial chicken house with perches.
All the broiler houses and egg producing houses I've heard of
have had no perches in them.
>they do all other normal
>chicken things except roost, but they really are a little eccentric, it
>seems to me. one has a game of jumping on my feet (literally) while i'm
>trying to walk around.
It would be interesting to see what that's about. If it's a young
cock (I've always called them stags), he may be trying to attack
you. We bought some day old broilers and raised them up to
eat, keeping a few to raise more from. They get so huge and
awkward that they can't fight at all the way chickens are supposed
to, but can only jump up and down in a pitiful, comical attempt. See
how these birds each have both feet off the ground:
http://www.thaiphotoblogs.com/media/cockfight1.jpg
That's how Jungle Fowl, which is what chickens were developed
from, fight. Game chickens are closest to the Jungle Fowl and fight
that way, but most domestic chickens have been bred so that they
won't really hurt each other too bad in yard fights, and almost never
kill each other. When the breeding gets so far away from the original
like your birds, the ability to fight using their feet like they are supposed
to has disappeared entirely, and the spurs they grow are of no use to
the birds...just something to trip over and learn to step over in later
years when they get long. If you ever have an older cock and it looks
like his spurs are growing up in a curve that will cause them to grow
into his leg, I hope you will cut them off. 1/4 inch from the leg will often
bleed, and I believe they have some feeling that close, but if you move
out about 1/2 it will probably be far enough to avoid bleeding and any
pain for the bird. Of course he might still trip over them at that length,
so those are things to consider if you get in the position, or know
someone who is.
> You should
>> try putting them on the roost when it is dark, without turning a
>> light on or they will just jump back down.
>
>3 weeks out of 4, the darkness at my place is absolute and total. this can
>never work.
If you have artificial lights that just go out all of a sudden it could
never work anyway. The slow gradual fading of sunlight is what
encourages more normal chickens to begin their little ritual of going
to roost, and also what allows them to get to the roost successfully.
> Some of them will
>> jump down or fall off anyway, but if you do it regularly some of
>> them should get the idea since there's an instinct for it to begin
>> with, and eventually they might all start doing it voluntarily if
>> they're not too old to learn already. It probably also has something
>> to do with the type of chicken you're dealing with...
>
>i'll see how i go with persuading them (unless or until one or the other of
>us gets tired of it) but really it was a throwaway comment. perhaps the
>construction & layout of both houses they've been in is to blame.
>kylie
Also their breeding. The roosting instinct is bred out of commercially
raised chickens, probably deliberately. If not, there would be thousands
of birds trying to fly up onto window sills and feed troughs, and whatever
else they could see when it begins to get dark every day.
