hen digging nest too deep

[Abriana]

Try a really squishy rug or something at the bottom

 

[nomirawr1]

It is a hens' instinct to create a saucer shaped nest. Hen eggs (say as opposed to fish eggs) are, well their egg shaped. An egg shaped object in a saucer shaped nest naturally rests small end down and big end or air cell up like is required for a hens' egg to efficenly hatch. My question to you is this, How much humidity does dry straw bring to the party?

Try this, use a straight point shovel to cut a strip of green living turf, grass, roots, soil and all. Make it the same shape but a little longer and wider than the inside bottom dimensions of the nesting box. Fit this chunk of green living turf into the bottom of the nest box, with the sides of the turf running a short way up the insides of the nest box, only fit it into the nest box grass side DOWN. Now would be a great time to slowly pour a bucket of cool clean water onto the just installed chunk of turf. Set the nest box in a good location inside the hen house, pen, run, or coop. Depending on the size of the box add a single hand full of straw (NO hay) to the inside of the nest box. Hens are females and as such they will arrange, or rearrange and then arrange some more every single stick of wheat straw to suite her cosverrosity. Seeing that your sitting hen will be the one whose butt is glued in place for the next 3 weeks, IMHO that is a small price for a human to pay to make sure his or her hens' backside is comfortable.

This is what I did this morning we had a couple good rains recently, so the ground is fairly damp already. She took a few mins, but settled on it.
I hadnt even considered the humidity on straw, could definitely be a contributing factor to why we've had such abysmal hatching rates! (1 chick from 14 eggs over 2 hatches). To be honest I kind of figured 'ok, hen has it sussed she'll do the temp/humidity thing!'

Thanks for the info & ideas everyone!