Chickens only Lay in same box as ceramic eggs

[CLchickenmama]

Ok so I had read that ceramic eggs can help teach your hens to lay in the egg boxes. And I have free range chickens and this is our first batch so there are no older chickens for them to learn from.
So it actually worked! But here is the weird part - they only lay in the boxes that have the ceramic eggs in them. I have moved the fake eggs to different boxes and left others empty. Without fail they always lay with the ceramic eggs. I don’t get it. And then I started removing some fake eggs and they started laying less! Lol. I don’t know what to think but the ceramic eggs don’t hurt anything so I put them back in the boxes.
Anyone else experience this ever? Lol

 

[featheredplanets]

It’s because they think it’s a good safe nest. Hens will often all lay in the same nest, that’s why I can’t understand when some people have 6 nests for 10 hens - they’ll only use 1! It’s not strange or concerning.

 

[Stepnout]

Put a white golf ball in every nest. That will give them a choice. As stated it really doesn't matter they only pick the nests they like and love sharing nest boxes.

 

[chrissynemetz]

I would just leave fake eggs in every nest box. Like @featheredplanets said, they feel that it must be safe if someone else used it. It's totally normal chicken behavior.

 

[Jrios58]

It’s because they think it’s a good safe nest. Hens will often all lay in the same nest, that’s why I can’t understand when some people have 6 nests for 10 hens - they’ll only use 1! It’s not strange or concerning.

We didn't know any better when building our coop so we have 12 nest boxes for 12 hens. Lol. My hens use 5 of them for laying, so far. One hen sleeps in one of them every night. The rest are on roosts. They only sleep or lay eggs in the 6 boxes on the west side tho.