chicken sleeping in nesting box

[lindsayrussell]

i went down to check on my chickens at 6:00pm PST and saw that one of my chickens is in the nesting box, The others are on the roost and one was still in the run. I went down there again at 7 PM and she is still in there, sleeping. This is the first time I’ve seen her do this. We don’t have a rooster and our roots are way above the nesting box. she is also lower in the pecking order :/

please let me know what i should do, when I looked it up none of the reasons applied to our coop that’s why I am posting here

 

[sourland]

Is she molting ? Is there any possibility she has gone broody ?

 

[NatJ]

She might just feel like sleeping there--some chickens do.
You could lift her out and put her on the roost, which will keep her from pooping in the nestbox while she's sleeping. (Which is the main reason to have chickens NOT sleep in the nestbox.)

Or she could be broody.
If she spends most of tomorrow in the nestbox, and also tries to sleep there tomorrow night, she might well be broody.
A broody hen is trying to sit on eggs to hatch chicks. She doesn't care if there is a rooster or not, if the eggs are fertile or not, and some don't even care if there are any eggs in the nest. They definitely do NOT think things through!

 

[rosemarythyme]

Some possibilities: she's broody, she happened to lay late and not make it onto the roost in time so stayed put, or she's been bullied off the roost to the point that she didn't want to keep trying.