bucket nesting boxes

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Lucille, my one hen that's old enough to lay, has been laying outside, so I wanted to give her an indoor place to nest. She's a portly girl (a cornish cross), so I was worried she'd be too big to waddle into most prefab nest boxes. After reading this I realized I had a cat carrier in the basement that I wasn't using. I popped the door off, lined it with some nice hay (and a golf ball), and put it in a corner of the coop. I leaned a long pallet against it, diagonally from floor to wall, to keep the chickens from roosting on it and to provide a little extra privacy. Lucille laid her next egg that same day, in the usual outdoor spot...but today she laid one in the cat carrier nest. It's not glamorous, but Lucille is happy, and as we said when building the coop, "it's good enough for chickens." Thank you for the idea!
 
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These ideas are great! Although we have wooden nest boxes, my girls kept perching on the rims at night so DH took some 1" PVC pipe from an irrigation project, made a lengthwise slice with one of his handy dandy power saws, and we popped 1-foot sections of it onto the edges of the nest boxes. Voila! Perches for fat hens.
 
You can get those five gal. buckets free from restaurants or for very little from the home stores like Lowe's or Home Depot from what I have read and yes, from hardware stores or dairy barns.
 
I had a thought too....they are smaller buckets...
but they are free. Check your local grocery store...where they make cakes...or donuts.
Their icing buckets are, on average 3 gallons, and free.
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We get tofu buckets for free from the local natural foods co-op. They are maybe 4 - 4.5 gallons. A little under 5 gallons.

Another idea is cubies, plastic cube containers about 4 gallons that restaurants get vegetable oil in. If you know anyone who has a car that runs on vegetable oil, they can probably set you up with as many cubies as you could ever want! You could put a cubie as a liner inside a cardboard box (for darkness) and then pull the cubie out to clean it once in a while.
 
Iʻve been using the square buckets that Costco sells its clumping kitty litter in. I remove the handle and ziptie them together thru the handle eyelet. Then I screw them onto a 2x4 with deck screws. A 1x6 screwed to the bottom 2x4 makes a nice front edge and my only other change is to drill 4 holes in the bottom (now the back) to allow for water drainage if they get wet. The plastic doesnʻt melt while drilling and all the edges are rolled and smooth. Of course, the repeating picture of the kitty on each of them may be unnerving for the hens!
 
While we are talking about nesting materials for the boxes (and floor as well) I went to sawdust, mixed with pine shavings if I don't have enough sawdust. I get the sawdust from school, shop class! If any of you live near a middle or high school, contact the shop teacher, they will probably be more than glad to have you come take it off their hands. It is so soft, and not really "dust" more like little curley cues of soft wood. I just checked with the teacher to make sure all the wood they were using was unfinished, untreated, and not cedar!
 
I think Denali's reaction to second cut hay as nest material is because there has been a dire shortage of hay in many areas of the country for the past several months.

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I can't even get the guy who usually cuts and bales to come and cut my field. I have ten acres that have my second cut hay just sitting there. Anyone wants it can come cut and bale it. It is dry, so little to no food value, but we were going to build straw bale coops and use it for bedding.

Cheri​
 

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