The instinct you are working with
Chickens are roosting birds: as light fades they look for a high, safe place to spend the night, and a well-set coop is the best offer in the garden. Hens that sleep in trees or under the shed are not being difficult — they have decided another spot is safer or more comfortable, or they never learned that the coop was home. Training is therefore less about teaching and more about arranging things so the flock's own instinct lands them on your perches each evening.
Imprinting the coop as home
New hens must start with several days shut in the coop and its attached run, with feed and water inside. This feels strict, but it is how a hen files a place as home; birds released on day one to free-range a new garden commonly choose a hedge and have to be re-taught from scratch. After three or four days of coming down from those perches each morning, the coop is where dusk points them. Pullets raised on the place need no such lesson — they follow their mother in — but bought-in birds always do.
If you are adding hens to an existing flock, imprint them in a sectioned-off part of the coop if you can, so home is learned while introductions happen safely through wire.
Light and supper: the two lures that finish the job
A low light inside the coop, switched on before dusk and off once the hens are in, is the single most effective trick: chickens move toward light as darkness falls rather than stumbling around outside it, and a dim coop glows like a porch light on a lane. A small scatter of feed or a few mealworms inside the coop in the late afternoon gives early birds a reason to go in before dark rather than lingering, and once a few hens are settled on the perches the rest follow by flock instinct.
Consistency matters for the first fortnight: walk the garden at the same stage of fading light each evening, usher any dawdlers in calmly, and count heads on the perch. Most flocks need active shepherding for only a week or two before the routine runs itself.
Troubleshooting hens that still stay out
A hen sleeping out repeatedly is telling you something. Check the coop for red mite — these parasites hide in perch joints by day and feed on roosting hens by night, and a mite-ridden coop is one hens will refuse however good the light is; scrub and treat the housing and perches if you find them. Check also for bullying: a low-ranking hen driven off the perch by the flock's enforcers may choose the cold over the pecking, and a second perch at a different height often solves it. Older or heavy hens may struggle with a steep ramp or a high pop-hole step — lower the climb before blaming the bird.
In high summer the flock stays out later because dusk itself is later; judge by the light, not by the clock, when you go out to shut them in.
The human part of 'automatically'
An automatic door removes the nightly timing pressure, but it does not count heads or notice the hen trapped behind the water butt. The reliable routine is a quick dusk round: confirm every hen is in, shut and latch against night predators, and note anything odd — an empty perch where a regular should be is your earliest warning of a lost or unwell bird.
That round takes a minute when it is a habit, and KinsLe's Care Teams lets you assign the dusk headcount and door check as a daily duty on your flock's profile, marked done with a timestamp, so a missed evening is visible instead of discovered at dawn.