Less Mess, Less Hassle

One of the most common questions we receive is “Don’t my chickens need a ramp to get to the roost bars and egg box?” Contrary to popular belief, they actually don’t! All our coops are designed to be accessible for your chickens without the use of a ramp. We didn’t land on this design by accident. We’ve kept and raised our own flocks for over a decade and worked closely with poultry behavior specialists when developing our coop interiors. 

Chickens Are Natural Jumpers

Standard-size adult chickens (Leghorns, Orpingtons, Wyandottes, Australorps, and most other common backyard breeds) have powerful leg muscles relative to their body size and a wing structure built for short, controlled bursts of flight. An adult hen (12 weeks+)  can comfortably hop or flutter up 2–3 feet vertically without strain, which covers the height from the coop floor to the roost bars or egg box on all the Roost & Root coops. In the wild, roosting several feet off the ground is instinctive, it’s how chickens avoid ground predators at night. So the jump itself is part of their normal behavior, not a hurdle.

In practice, internal ramps tend to introduce more problems than they solve:

• Droppings collect on the incline: Since this ramp would sit directly under the roost bars, it would easily becomes one of the messiest and most difficult to reach surfaces in the whole coop to clean. 
• It eats up usable floor space: A ramp in the coop takes up valuable roaming area from your birds. 
• It can become a bottleneck: With potentially timid hens your girls could be stuck waiting their turn or facing the pecking order instead of just hopping straight up.

When a Ramp Actually Helps

There’s one clear exception: bantam breeds. These miniature chickens (Silkies, Dutch Bantams, Seramas) weigh as little as 1–2 pounds and don’t always have the leg power or wing-loading ratio to clear standard entry heights. If your flock includes bantams, a small ramp or step is worth adding. Please reach out to us and let us know if this is the case for your flock and we’d be more than happy to help come up with a solution.

The Takeaway

For most flocks, skipping the internal ramp is the way to go. Your coop stays cleaner, keeps more usable interior space, and your hens get up to roost the way they’re built to — by hopping! Just like they would in a tree. 

Have more questions about our designs or which coop setup fits your flock? Reach out to us! We’re experienced chicken keepers who would love to help you!