Porches Bad Idea?

[PaulaZ]

I have two PUMA rigs in north Ohio on South Bass Island, Lake Erie. This weekend, there was so much activity, birds getting ready to fledge and high winds. 20+ day old chicks were falling out of the back rig where I have two aluminum Trio houses (each house has 12 compartments converted to 6 compartments) and 4 horizontal gourds mounted underneath.

Young were climbing out on porches and on top of each other to beg for food and wind was taking them down. It gets very windy on the island. I had to replace at least 4 chicks over the weekend and very hard to figure out which compartment they belonged in. I am wondering whether I should remove porches or modify them somehow to prevent this in future. Young have plenty of room inside to exercise as they have two compartments for each nest.

Front rig is all plastic gourds and nobody jumped ship there over the weekend - no porches to climb out on and fall off of?

Total chicks in both rigs is 146 right now (total compartments available is 32).

Another question I have is horizontal plastic gourds mounted beneath the Trio aluminum houses can get very wet inside with bad urea smell. I had to do a late nest change with some chicks that I would have left be due to their age, but really had to change it out this weekend. This has happened before in the gourds under the Trio houses, but not in gourds in front rig - unsure what is happening.

Paula Z

[Carlton]

I have a few extra large natural gourds with porchless Clinger entrances. The pairs had large broods and none ever left before they could fly. I was pleased with the results of the porchless gourds. I did have the owl guard hooks (homemade) bent over the entrances but no young ever came out and perched on those.