first egg ???????

[harvey40]

We got a suprise this morning with our first egg from 1 of our 2 Isa Browns,But it looks like she layed it from her roost as the egg was cracked and under the roost why is this, as she has a nice nesting box next to her roost??????????

thanks for any help

 

[Freckle Face Farm]

Make sure you keep plastic eggs, golf ball, anything that looks like an egg and leave them in the nesting area..She will learn..

 

[Kittymomma]

Quote:
A few of mine were confused at first too. They figured it out after a couple of tries. I put some golf balls in a few of the nesting boxes to help them get the idea--most of them don't use the nests with the golf balls in them, but they are all using the boxes now. Bummer that the much anticipated first egg was broken though.

 

[wombat]

Most of mine have gone right to the nest boxes, but they have the older hens for examples. We used golf balls when the first ones were getting started.

I have one young one from this spring's hatching who started out dropping eggs from the roost, though. Sometimes they'd break, sometimes the litter was thick enough to save them. Of late, she's been nesting in the litter on the floor in the corner just under the nesting boxes. I'm not sure if I should break up her nest, and hope she moves to the box, or consider this progress, and let her be.

I'll probably make a "portable" nesting box this weekend that I can put on the floor in the corner she's been using, so at least the eggs will be clean. She's been the only one to not use the boxes, but she's a good sized RIR and is laying nice eggs only three weeks from starting to lay ... just not in convenient places!

Yours might progress to nesting behavior, in time. Mine took only about two weeks to get from dropping eggs from the roost to nesting on the floor.

Good luck!