I'm glad we're not the only ones doing this type of experiment. We don't use buckets but milk crates, the good solid AE type and some are AE. We have a very large 2 room coop w/ 26 birds. The smaller room in front is their "bedroom"/"laying room" and the large room is their "kitchen"/"den"/"laying room". We opened up the larger room when we added 16 chicks to the mix of the established 9 older pullet flock. With 25 layers we figured we probably needed to add more nesting crates so we did.
In the smaller room we have a yellow, brown and red box, all lined up on the same wall in a row and away from roosts. They all have the same amount of bedding material (shredded paper) and golf balls. The only thing different is color. We've found that the yellow one is NOT a favorite and only gets used if the other two are occupied and they can't wait. Very rarely is there more than 2 eggs in that box, if any at all. Prior to the yellow, brown, red order, the red and brown were switched. It seemed as though the middle red box was used most of all, but we didn't know if it was the color or the placement being in the middle. So before putting them to bed one night I switched the red and brown boxes. (The larger back room has a double wide black box, a regular yet taller brown box and a yellow box all along the same wall and under windows.)
It's been a couple weeks since I switched the red and brown boxes. It's been a bit inconclusive I think. Some days the brown is used more and others it's the red one. And in the back room, the middle taller brown one is used most. Only found an egg twice in the double wide black and once in the yellow. One things for sure, they really don't care for yellow for whatever reason. If it was the red color that they liked, we were going to paint all of the boxes red, but now we're not sure.
Any opinions on this?
Signed, crazy chicken lady psychologist
