Chickens not laying in nest boxes

[Empathy]

Great video - the poop deck is brilliant!!!!! Ours is made of wood and of course at times it would get SO wet from urine, making it really hard to keep sanitary. So I have been using newspaper and changing it daily, and have been trying to come up with a better material. This is so simple, I don't know why I never thought of tiles!

As for your egg problems, I cannot give you any good advice that's not already been mentioned. We painstakingly made "precise" nesting boxes for our coop and our girls were not impressed at all. They would use the nesting boxes now and again (and using a fake egg did help entice them a little) but 9 times out of 10 they would always head for a corner of the coop. It has been this way for years, and every time we bring in a newbie they seem to tow the same line. I finally put a large wicker basket their corner of choice, filled it with straw and now that is almost all that they use for laying. They will use the nest box on the rare occasion that they can't wait any longer for the basket to be vacated by one of their sisters. But I have one girl who I swear holds her egg until I let them out to roam, and then she goes and lays under a bush or our tractor and sometimes even on the roof of one of our out buildings...she makes me work to find her eggs!

What works for one person's flock may not work for yours - Keep trying, you'll find your solution, even though it might not be "text book"

Best of luck and thanks for the poop deck idea!

Ciao for now,
Empathy

 

[HappyTalons]

Okay I think we may have JUST succeeded! Luckily our girls tend to lay at roughly the same time so I had two chickens to play with. (We'll see in a few minutes if it really worked but they are sitting contentedly in separate nest boxes.) Here's exactly what I did.

They were already in the nesting/roosting part of the coop but they were really trained on their favorite spot, I went ahead and locked the coop door in case they got any ideas about laying elsewhere.

1. I grabbed a chicken and very gently pushed her into the nest box. She pecked a bit and hopped out. (this is with white golf balls in the nest)

2. I put some large plastic flower pots in their usual spot. They determinedly tried to push them aside and lay there.

3. I tried more tossing in the box, still hopped back out and went for the old spot.

4. Finally I remembered we have some old store bought brown eggs that we had been meaning to throw out so I grabbed those and went back out to the coop and put them in the nest boxes.

5. I sort of hoped the girls would see the eggs and go right in but they just kind of stared at the eggs at first and were looking back at the old spot.

6. I pushed one of the girls into the nest box but she tried to roll the egg to the old spot again.

7. Finally I pushed her farther into the nest box so the egg was in front of her, close to below her. This time she pulled the egg towards herself and sat down!

8. I hoped my other girl would get the message and go to the other nest box but no. So I repeated the exact same process, making sure the brown egg was under/in front of her and the same thing happened!

I think the "real egg under me" seemed to do the trick. Now whether they will stay there and lay there tomorrow is another question!


*Update* just went outside again and the second bird rolled the egg all the way from the nest box back to her favorite spot! So I grabbed her, put the egg back in the box, threw out some of the excess straw, put the egg under her and she sat down again. We'll see if she stays. The first hen is very happily sitting in her next box.*Update*

 

[HappyTalons]

Success!

The egg in the foreground of both nests is the store bought and is slightly darker than the ones from our girls.
I haven't seen our third known layer go in the coop today though. I may have to wrangle her tomorrow.

 

[gordonburrito]

Well things are going better now. Foxy has started laying in the nest boxes without prompting. Our black sex link Scrappy though still feels the need to "rescue" the decoy eggs and golf balls from the nests and then tries to lay outside of the box along with her rescued egg clutch. My wife caught her this morning and moved her the decoy egg and the golfball back into the nest. She was mid lay so she was in a trance of sorts and found herself in the nest box when her egg came out. We then got a very loud egg song before she abandoned her egg to go eat grass with the other girls.

 

[Rachel'sFlock]

Hooray!!!

 

[gordonburrito]

Well looks like Scrappy (BSL) isn't exactly fixed yet. I think the other chickens are. So, we need to work on her some more. I saw her going into the coop, but instead of following her my son decided he wanted to eat. Well then I hear the egg song and she's setting off the other chickens, so I stopped feeding to go look. I wished I had a picture because it was a pretty funny scene. She was sitting in the middle of the coop (since her spot is blocked off) and had rolled two golfballs, two decoy store bought eggs, Ednas egg laid earlier all out of BOTH boxes and had laid hers on top of them. When I moved her, she squatted for me...but then wandered out of the coop.....the run ladder decided to slip and give out as she was leaving and she stormed off BAWK! BAWK! BAWK! Her make shift nest was pretty impressive with 4 eggs and 2 golfballs in the divit she made. We are on the right track though and she just needs a BIT of work.