My first flock of chickens will be ready to lay their first eggs in a few weeks. What's a good way to encourage them to use the nest boxes rather than just laying the eggs in a corner of the coop.
My first flock of chickens will be ready to lay their first eggs in a few weeks. What's a good way to encourage them to use the nest boxes rather than just laying the eggs in a corner of the coop.
I wish I knew the answer to this one. Ours lay in the hay loft, on the ground, in the sheep pen, oh, and sometimes in the laying baskets! A friend told me that it is important for the laying boxes to face north so that there is the least amount of light on them, but I have not tried out this theory yet.
Frank
Staunton, VA
I am no expert but my farm girl wife just moved any mislaid eggs into one of the boxes. It seemed to work. Took a minute but as I remember the old hen house on the farm faced east and ours faced south and had a good size window in the south wall. The window had an extended roof over it to shade the it.
You'll get some in the egg boxes, and some all over the place. Are you free ranging your chickens? That's what we do. You have to keep searching, and hopefully, you'll find the chickens' favorite laying spots, and you'll be able to collect as many eggs as possible. Every once in a while, we'll move something in one of our barns and find a collection of eggs that we didn't expect. Since we don't know how long they were sitting there, we feed them back to the chickens. Chickens love smashed eggs!![img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]
Rich
"What a long strange trip it's been."
We have some fake eggs (ceramic?) for that purpose. Keep a couple in each nesting box and collect the eggs laid errantly ASAP and the biddies soon get the idea. What kinda chickens you got?
RichZ,
I think you have just trained your chickens to eat eggs. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
I keep 28 layers and have 5 boxes. At first, the hens would only use two of the boxes. This sometimes resulted in 5 or 6 hens cramming themselves ino the same small space or laying their eggs randomly in the coop. The solution was to place a golf ball in each of the boxes. Apparently, hens like to lay their eggs where others have. They think the ball is another egg. All of the boxes are now in use. Also, chickens are cannibalsitc; therefore, I avoid letting them eat broken eggs. Once they get a taste they begin to destroy perfectly good eggs.
I like the golf ball idea, I hadn't thought og that. We have tried leaving one egg out in the boxes and marking it with an "X" so that we knew which one it was and could leave it there. That seemed to work somewhat, but they still only used one of the four boxes. Golf balls tonight, report in a few days!
Frank
Andy -- We free range our chickens, but lock them up in the coop for safety at night. To get them to lay in the nesting boxes as their time comes we simply don't let them out till mid to late morning. Once the first egg is laid in the box, like others have said the rest of the hens follow suit.
Pete
<font color="blue"> What kinda chickens you got? </font color>
I have Buff Orpingtons and Rhode Island Reds. A friend and I bought 25 of each in May and I kept 20 of the Buffs and 10 Rhode Island Reds. We ordered sexed birds and I ended up with one Rooster.
I keep the birds in an 8X8 coop I added on to my barn and during the day let them out into a fenced yard which is about 24X20. A few times a week I let them out into the field for a few hours so that they can eat some grass and clover and find a few more insects.
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