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Well chickens aren't too bright, to be blunt. There is no real thought process at work that I can discern. They lay wherever, often enough, but mostly it's because they havent been trained to the nests. Free rangers are bad about this.
Thats probably why yours are doing it where they are: They are in full lay, so first off, they cant help it.
You are making them comfy and stress free, so only minor cycle interruptions, if any, are occuring.
They are unaccustomed to their surroundings.
So they are likely to lay anywhere, for now.
However, they do have "preferences" and once they settle on a place, they stick to it, for the most part. The thing to do is take advantage of this and attempt to regulate their processes as best you can.
Here are some of the ways the old timers did that:
- Keep their roosts and nests near each other, as they tend to lay soon after waking up.
- It's recommended you confine them to their coop until about 11am, for this reason.
- Don't feed them heavily until late morning. The old Doctor Pepper slogan, "... at 10, 2, and 4," works pretty good for chickens.
- Give them one last feeding of grain in the evening as a treat.
For reasons I'm not smart enough to figure out, these things combined help get them on a schedule.
NESTS
- Keep their nests dimly lit, as they prefer seclusion and privacy when laying. It also discourages egg eating.
- Have one nest, 14"-18" square, for each 4 hens.
- Give it a perch outside and 12" wide opening they can "peer" in through, with a 4" tall frontispiece.
They have a little ritual they perform of checking out the nest before entering. Once inside, all you should see is their head. This also prevents them from kicking the litter out of the nest.
If there are places you don't want them nesting in, do the above things so they lay where you wish and then bar them from the undesirable area. Before long, they normally get with the program.
just too expensive for us
