And this is why there is a constant poop mess in my nestboxes - UGH!

[bobbieschicks]

I get so frustrated with this!

I'm just going to have to finally build the rollout boxes and hopefully then they won't want to hang out in them all the time. I've got silkies who hang out in there every night and broodies who hop up to stay for a month! All leave some level of poop in there which makes my eggs messy and my hands dirty picking out the eggs!

Left - Silkie (not broody), Center - White Leghorn (molting, she's the head pullet and this is her first time sleeping in the nestbox so suspect she isn't feeling well), Right - Silkie (broody with her four day old chicks under her and her 13 week old chick sitting with her)

On the floor are the two 13 week old Maran chicks (cockerel and pullet) who normally sleep in that center box.



Here is the roost area - plenty of room for everyone and they all huddle on one stinking 2x4.

 

[tbitt]

Yup! Just like in my coop!

 

[mickey328]

We had the same issue so we made a sort of flap that can be raised and lowered, blocking off the boxes. It's simple in the extreme...used a piece of heavy cotton as a "hinge"...tacked it across the top of a piece of 1/4 ply and the top of the boxes. It flips up and rests on top of the boxes when we let them out in the morning, and by about 4 or 5 pm, when theyre done laying, we flip it down for the night. It's amazing how clean those nest boxes are now!

 

[ChickensRDinos]

Try blocking off the boxes until the get into the routine for roosting. How high are your roosts? Is it possible they are too high for the silkies? I had to build mine a lower roost.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Try blocking off the boxes until the get into the routine for roosting. How high are your roosts? Is it possible they are too high for the silkies? I had to build mine a lower roost.

Topsy (the broody) was on the roost until she went broody - but the teenager Miss Fuzzy (buff silkie on the left) won't go up there. She prefers to sit in the boxes. The partridge silkie roo used to sit with her in there until he became the alpha roo and now he sits with the big girls on the roost. The marans were on the roost with their broody momma, but now that the cockerel is 13 weeks old & he's getting pecked more from the big girls and the alpha silkie roo, so he and the maran pullet are hanging on the floor for awhile.

 

[bobbieschicks]

We had the same issue so we made a sort of flap that can be raised and lowered, blocking off the boxes. It's simple in the extreme...used a piece of heavy cotton as a "hinge"...tacked it across the top of a piece of 1/4 ply and the top of the boxes. It flips up and rests on top of the boxes when we let them out in the morning, and by about 4 or 5 pm, when theyre done laying, we flip it down for the night. It's amazing how clean those nest boxes are now!

Do you have a pic of that? Sounds interesting.

 

[mickey328]

When DH gets home, I'll see if I can talk him into taking a couple

 

[Smoochie]

You need some nest box curtains. I'm not kidding!

 

[sunnyvera]

We too have nest box doors - DH made ours out of hardware cloth. There are two doors, each covering 2 nest boxes. They hinge out of the way during the day, then around nite time, we close them down. Lately they go to bed soooo early that I have to shoo them out to shut the doors. Once we forgot to open them in the morning and had eggs laid in the run. It is sometimes a pain, but it beats poo on the eggs. The worst offenders seem to be the younger birds. They are almost a year old, not that young, and they still like to pile up in them. When I shoo them out, they pile up in the corner. I put them on the roost, but they prefer the ground. Funny birds. I know of no other way to keep them out of the boxes. Our boxes are about 2 feet off the ground, not as high as the roosts.