Last year the local farm store my daughter worked at had chicks getting old on them and not selling. They marked them down, then I talked them down farther buying them all, then got my daughters discount on top of that.

I got a smoking deal on fully feathered chicks. But they were not ready to go out and hold there own with the big girls yet and were small enought they could fit throught the electric net goat fence i use.

So i put them in one of my meat bird tractor pens. They stayed there tell last night when i banded them and put them into my mobil coup with the rest of them. How long will i have to keep them locked up so they will start roosting and using the coup? Its built on a 16' trailer and i figured they will likely try to roost and lay under it since they have been in a meat bird pen on the ground so long.

I was thinking a week min maybe out to a month before they see the coop as home what do you think.

If it is big enough I would keep them in it two weeks. With the temps as low as they are they may just stay in it anyways.

They'll probably stay

None of my girl or guineas get out during winter. Just lose too many with all the hawks around this time of year. Don’t hurt them at all to keep cooped up. Give them some greens and scraps from the senior center where my wife works. Darn things will eat anything!

Not sure about your specific situation, since you are mixing birds. Would think the bigger issue is if the do go to roost with the older birds, they are gonna get the crap kicked out of em for a while.

But in general, it takes 7 to 10 days when you move birds for them to rehome to the new spot. Have stuck to that schedule, so never had an issue myself, but have heard of accounts where folks would move a coop as little as 100 feet. At dusk, when it was time to go to roost, birds would go back to where it was.....not where it was moved to. But give them that 7 to 10 days of being locked up, they go to where it is. What difference it makes is known only to the chickens, and they are not saying.

Dang right they will. Mine really like beaver and deer.