First eggs...on henhouse floor..???

[Ol Grey Mare]

Like others suggested. Ceramic eggs or golf balls. Easter eggs/plastic eggs are light and will easily be kicked out of nest. If they are are two halves, open and put clean sand, gravel or small stones in one half and glue together, for extra weight. If you have a large coop, keep them in coop till noon. If you free range then keep them in the run till noon, then you can search the run for eggs. But not all eggs are laid in the morning, so you'll still have to search the yard. GC

X2

Is the second photo the egg in a nest box? If so you may want to bed your nests a little deeper as the exposed wood showing can cause cracking/ breaking of eggs

 

[Shore]

Golf balls installed! My dad would be laughing that I've used them that way
Thanks for the quick response. Hope I've caught this in time...will keep you posted. Maybe there will be more tomorrow!

 

[Shore]

IT WORKED!!! Golf ball installed & Dominique responded with this cute little brown egg this afternoon. So fun! Thanks everyone for the advice. Hope the other ladies will follow suit!

 

[apryl29]

Will the golf ball method work with trying to get them to lay in more than one box? I have several boxes, but I have at least 6 ladies all laying in 1 box. They were all laying behind the trash can I keep their feed in so I gave in and put a box there... now everyone is laying in there. Also, I use straw & they keep kicking it all out of the boxes. Do they normally do that w/ pine shavings too? I don't want to bother buying the shavings if they're just going to kick it out too.

 

[Ursuline Chick]

more golf balls may help, but they tend to like certain boxes better than others. go figure

 

[GC-Raptor]

I use straw in my boxes with a lip to keep it in. Put a 4 to 6 inch lip at bottom of boxes. That said new layers will kick it out for a month or so after the last to lay starts laying. Fake eggs or golf balls may or may not convince them to use other nests. GC

 

[Dawnclucks22]

Like plastic Easter eggs? or wooden eggs? I'm new to this, TY

Anything that resembles an egg will work. I've heard of golf balls doing the trick!

 

[apryl29]

It's worth a try. I've made them these nice boxes and they go and lay their eggs in the corner. SMH. They are all really young still. I'd noticed them kicking around the straw and pecking at something, but there shouldn't be any food in there... but everything is food to them.

 

[GC-Raptor]

It's worth a try. I've made them these nice boxes and they go and lay their eggs in the corner. SMH. They are all really young still. I'd noticed them kicking around the straw and pecking at something, but there shouldn't be any food in there... but everything is food to them.

What they are trying to do is make a depression by scratching around. It takes awhile for them to get the hang of it. Click the picture in my previous post and you can see the depression. The 2 white eggs are fakes. They still have a favorite nest. GC

 

[apryl29]

The ones who are kicking out the straw aren't even laying yet. They just go in and knock all the straw out. I think they try to do it to make me crazy.