Ok, I'm not seeing any threads related to my questions, so here goes...My four girls are just a few weeks away from starting to lay.
1. How do you teach them not to poop in the nest boxes? The coop has three, and I'm adding one more in the run, using a little pet crate I used to move them around with when they were tiny. Now it's just about the right size for one bird. Inside the coop "house" where they sleep, are the three nest boxes. I shut them in at night, and they poop over every square inch, including the nest boxes. Since the entire floor comes out, I clean all the poop out every morning, and shut them out during the day, so it will be nice and clean for them when they go to bed. But once they start laying, I'll have to leave the house open to give them access to the nest boxes. How will they know to stop pooping in the nest boxes once they start laying? Especially since there are no grown up chickens around to tell them?
I don't use bedding inside the house, I have a pet mat in there that is fuzzy like felt on one side and waterproof on the other. I put a clean one in every day (fuzzy side up) and they huddle together on that at night. There is one roost in there, but they don't know what to do with it. I've tried putting them on it, but they just jump right down. In the morning I roll up the mat and shake the poop into a compost bucket, then hose the gooey stuff off the mat. (I have four of them, cut to fit the size of the whole floor) After drying in the sun, I collect them and wash them in the machine twice a week.
I have smaller mats to cover the nest box floors. Now that they are almost laying age, I'm thinking of putting nest box excelsior mats in one the boxes to indicate this is for something else... and a nest egg.
2. How many nest eggs should I put in?
3. It seems like those excelsior mats would be impossible to clean if they got even one night's poop on them.
4. I'm thinking of putting the little pet crate nest box in the bigger run in a secluded place. When they were little the liked to use the crate as a hidey hole they would run into if anything scared them. I noticed that they didn't poop in it much. That way they could have a place to lay and I could still keep the house clean during the day. I can't imagine having to do the mat cleaning routine twice a day (morning and night). Besides the mat cleaning, after I shut them ip for the night, I rake the poop out of the under coop run (sand and PDZ), and turn the bark under in the bigger run. If it's too dark to do it at night, I do it in the early morning, before I open the door to the little house. I keep both 12"x16" doors of the little house open (with hardware cloth screens) for ventilation, so it airs out during the day.
5. Do they always lay in the daytime?
You can see the little pet crate in this picture. The Buff Orpington is so big now that I don't think she'd fit in the nest boxes inside the coop! The other picture shows how I had to rig up the screen door. There are structures inside preventing me from attaching it inside. Bonus, a couple of them like to jump up there and bounce up and down on the bungee cord. The won't do it for the camera, though!
. GC
