You can teach a young chick a new trick...(or my roost, my rules)

I was worried...

my crazy chicks were growing but still insisting on sleeping in a big pig pile on each other.

I tried to explain to them that someone was going to get hurt, even possibly suffocated.

They wanted to hear nothing of it.  See they were at that tween stage. 

Chickens or not, tweens and teens don't want to hear it.

Worst of all, they all seemed to prize the bottom of the big pile!  That was evidently the place to be.

See... there are 13 chickens in that pile...

It was time for Mamma Hen(that's me) to lay down the law.

I was not gonna have any of these girls suffocating on my watch!

They were not super excited about my new resolve on where and how they would be sleeping.

Back and forth, I would put them on the roost and they would jump off.

They would be calling to each other, 'no surrender' I think that was what they were chirping...

PC gave up, my husband gave up. I kept on alone and

finally I started seeing success.

It took a week of getting them every evening into the coop,

shutting their pop door and then the real fun...

putting each one on the roost.

See, it seemed like for every one I got on the roost, two would jump off.

But...after a full week...

Ta da.....

They stay up there all night long.  The only one having a problem is Perry.

She usually needs a reminder to get on her roost.

I think they finally figured out that they would rather pick their spot on the

roost rather than being put there by me.

It was like the Ferber Method only for chickens.

and now they all sleep like babies...