Chickens scared of the coop at night?

[cesargtapia]

Hello again!

I introduced myself a couple of days ago in this topic. I have four chickens, about 3/4 months old, that I got a week ago.

Meet Octavia, Ursula, Margaret and Connie:

They're starting to slowly get out of the coop during the day. They still don't go more than a couple meters away, just enough to get to the food and water, and, even though the coop door is always open during the day and they get in and out, they spend most of the time hidden below the pallets where I mounted the coop. But that's fine, it's more or less what I expected.

Here you can see the coop and the pallets where they hide during the day:

At dusk, when I try to move them back to the coop, they just don't want to go back. I have to grab them one by one and put them in the coop. But that's normal too, as far as I know.

The weird thing is that, when I put them inside the coop they start making a fuss and aggressively squeezing against the coop door. It's not that they're fighting, looks more like there's something scary inside the coop. They eventually calm down and fall asleep, but they refuse to move one inch away from the door, and they sleep there, in a tight ball of chickens.

During the day they don't seem scared of the coop at all, and they happily go in and out, doing their very important chicken stuff.

I don't know, I'm confused. I've read about scared chickens sleeping the first couple of weeks on the opposite and darker corner of the coop, looking for safety, but I never heard about chickens being apparently scared of the coop itself.

What do you guys think?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I don't see any windows. How do they get fresh air?
They may also fuss about the lack of light.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

It looks to be at least 4' tall from the outside view, but in the interior view, are we looking at the space under the coop? Can you post pics of the unside of the coop itself?

I agree you need to arrange ventilation in the coop, preferably one sq ft per chicken (who are adorable, by the way!). Openings should be well over the birds' heads and be so configured that rain and snow can't get in but air flows freely. Also if you can rig some sort of night light in there, I think you'll find that they'll put themselves to bed when waning daylight triggers that response in them. That may be 10 minutes or so after YOU think they should be going to bed, so you may have to exercise a little patience, or lure them in with the sound of the bag mealworms come in. They ARE familiar with that sound, right? Or a bucket if cracked corn?

 

[cesargtapia]

It looks to be at least 4' tall from the outside view, but in the interior view, are we looking at the space under the coop? Can you post pics of the unside of the coop itself?

Sure! Here you go:

I don't think there's a lack of ventilation. There are two openings of 100x25cm/40"x8", about 150cm/60" high, and there's not a hint of smell when I open the door in the morning.

The roost is about 50cm/20" hight, and of course they don't care for it at all (yet, I hope).

It's not visible in the picture, but behind the door there's a 55x40cm/22"x15" window that can't be opened.