Chicken Psychologist Needed

[Chicklette 1]

I have 9 hens, all laying. I have 8 nesting boxes in my coop. Can someone tell me why I find 6 eggs all in one box and maybe one here or there a couple of nests down ? I'm starting to use the other nest boxes for storage and in my new coop with my new batch of 8 chickens, I am only going to put in 3 nest boxes and one of them will be a double size. They try to knock each other out of the one nest box!

 

[PaulaJoAnne]

Quote:
Chickens love to nest together.
We now wish that we had built one long communal nest.
I often find hens stacked on top of each other in their crates

 

[sourland]

Just as the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, the nest box that Susie, and biddy, and becky, and bertie and boopy use is better than the one that razzie uses.

 

[justbugged]

I am not sure why hens like to all use the same nest, but I do know that it is completely normal. Three nesting boxes for 8 to 10 hens is more than enough. I don't think that I would bother to make one double sized. The odds are that they won't like that one. I think it is normal for hens, and kind of a monkey see monkey do, when they are vying for the same box.

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

That's simple. Would you sit on the cold toilet seat, or the warm one?

 

[sourland]

Depends on who sat there before me.

Maybe I'd opt for the cold one.

 

[classicsredone]

Quote:

Chickens are big copycats. They want whatever the other girls are eating, or drinking, or whatever.

 

[Gypsy07]

I think it's the same reason that you can put rubber eggs in the nest boxes to encourage them to lay in the right place. If there's already an egg or eggs in one box, that's a sign to the rest of them that it's a good safe place to lay. I have three nest boxes in my coop and I usually get 8+ eggs in one of them and only one or two in the other ones. Similarly when they lay in the straw out in our big shed, I usually find a whole pile of eggs stashed in the one place.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Quote:
Yep. And there's always a favorite box that they all want to lay in. It's usually not a problem until you get someone that goes broody in the favorite box!

 

[centrarchid]

They may be trying to cuckhold each other. When my game hens start laying, some will often lay eggs in another bird's nest. It is a way to have others raise some of cuckholder's chicks thus allowing cuckholder to produce more eggs.