First chooks, First Eggs! questions!

[EggWalrus]

You got some good advise from the ladies above. Another little trick if you can't get hold of fake eggs from the store, you can use golf balls, smooth river rocks, or any small round objects. If you decide to use real eggs, just remember to mark them with a pencil and change them out every couple of days. The eggs will still be good to eat even though they haven't been refrigerated. Seems to me the more eggs I have in a nest, the more hens want to lay in that nest.
Sorta like "chicken see, chicken do".
And a big congratulations on your first eggs!

 

[mtnchooks]

You got some good advise from the ladies above. Another little trick if you can't get hold of fake eggs from the store, you can use golf balls, smooth river rocks, or any small round objects. If you decide to use real eggs, just remember to mark them with a pencil and change them out every couple of days. The eggs will still be good to eat even though they haven't been refrigerated. Seems to me the more eggs I have in a nest, the more hens want to lay in that nest.
Sorta like "chicken see, chicken do".
And a big congratulations on your first eggs!

Thank you so much, very excited about these first eggs!!

 

[Mimi13]

My very first eggs were laid on the floor of the run. I panicked and started reading trying to find solutions, like you are doing. At the time several people mentioned putting curtains on their nesting boxes. That very day I got an old mint green sheet, cut a section out of it and stapled it up over the two nest boxes that were in my little prefab coop. I used pinking shears to cut strips about 3-4” wide so the girls could easily enter the nests. I also had fake eggs in each one. The very next day, and every day since, they began laying in the “private” nest boxes. Now I have no idea if the curtains were what sealed the deal for mine or if it just happened to be coincidence, and it only cost me about 15 minutes of my time, which was an excellent trade off. You might try that if you haven’t already. You just never know.
Good luck.

 

[SueT]

all these eggs arrived around 4pm, is that unusual, I thought early am was the norm....

Time of day eggs are laid varies. They say it takes 25 hrs to produce an egg, so the time laid will change. And they don't always lay one every day....esp at first....