Hay or Shavings...for nest boxes

[blueheaven]

Which is better...hay or shavings in the nest boxes.

I use deep litter method and just wondering which for the nest boxes.

The girls are 14 weeks and I want to start putting fake eggs in soon.

 

[lalaland]

either! I use hay, but shavings, straw, hay - it all works fine. some folks say to avoid straw because it is hollow and can shelter mites, but I figure if you have a mite problem you will have one regardless of whether you have hay or straw or shavings.

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
I agree. I have pine shavings on the floor of the coop and hay in my nestboxes. NO! My girls don't try to eat it. It stays in the nestboxes better than shavings do and they make neat little nest bowls out of it.
I dust the coop floor, roosts and nestboxes with DE regularly.

 

[ging3rhoffman]

We have really good 3rd cutting hay so our girls eat the hay so we went with straw. Their bedding is shavings so we wanted it to feel like a nest and not bedding.

They started laying last week and all have used their nest so it worked.

 

[augustmomx2]

I use shavings, the only reason being, I don't want to have something else to have to buy

I try to keep it simple...

 

[Laney]

I'm using Shavings. My only reason is that the coop is in the goat pasture. The current nextboxes are completely external and open. When we put the hay in the first time the goats thought we had made them a wonderful buffet and threw the golf balls out and ate the hay.

Now with the pine shavings they leave it alone. We had zero chance of a hen using it if goats were already popping their heads in all the time. Hubby is working on the design for the internal nestboxes for winter. We also have to fix the door to the coop as the goats have knocked it off and appropriated the coop. That problem will be fixed when the goat barn is up in a few weeks.

Laney