Did I confuse my chickens?

[toripaige585]

Hi all. Our hens are ~17 and 18wks old. They just started laying last week. Out of the five that we have, three of them were laying an egg a day pretty consistently, and always in the nesting box. When we realized that two of them were getting aggressive over one specific box, we decided to expand the coop to make space for more nests. Since then, we've only gotten two solid eggs per day, and 4 rubber eggs. Only one out of all of these eggs laid (since the coop expansion) was in a nesting box.
I'm wondering (sorry about the long back story) if the expansion of the coop has them stressed/confused about where to lay? I understand with them being new layers there will be inconsistencies, but to go from using a nest box everyday and zero rubber eggs to never using the nests and mostly all rubber eggs...I don't get it.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

You are probably correct that you stressed them out by changing things up. Give them a week or two and they should calm down and get back to business.

 

[aart]

Yep, stress....and it can take up to a month or so for things to smooth out fr a new layer, meanwhile you may get some funky eggs. Softshelled eggs are not unusual during this time.

You probably don't need more than 2 nests for 5 birds, they may squabble over and/or share nests......
......that's just the way it goes sometimes depending on their 'schedules' which can vary over time.