Chicken ramps

Many of you probably have small ramps leading up into your chicken coop like we do, but can chickens learn to utilize larger ramps?  Diane wrote in with this photo of a ramp she used to give her chickens access to a 1/3 of an acre of forest on the other side of their fence.  She wrote:

"The ramp is 8 feet long on both sides, and three feet high in the middle...it's a pretty gentle slope....  I coaxed them over the ramp (or physically walked them up the ramp) this AM and then watched as they foraged like crazy.  An hour or so later, I noticed my Barred Rock wanted back into her enclosure, so I went into the woods and gathered them all up and returned them...no easy task!

"My question is this...if they have never used a ramp before, and the ramp is not attached to the coop, will they learn to use the ramp to gain access to the extended foraging area, or will I need to make a door as you suggest and leave it open for them to come and go through?"

While I think that in Diane's case, a pophole is an easier solution, I was intrigued by the idea of large chicken ramps because I have a dream of creating a ramp in our chickens' forest pasture that goes up six or seven feet, then across the driveway along an elevated walkway, only to spit the chickens out in a new pasture on the far side.  So I suggested that Diane try leaving a trail of treats up the ramp, spaced about three or four inches apart, to tempt the chickens to cross by themselves in hopes that they could learn to walk across the fence.  She replied to my suggestion eight hours later by saying:

So, it sounds like a ramp might be a possibility if you need to move your chickens between non-contiguous pastures.