Hens throwing all wood chips out of nesting box

[rolohman]

Good morning!

We've had our first 12 eggs from our six chickens - 3-4 of them are laying, we think. About half of the eggs have been stepped on and slightly cracked. The hens go into the nesting boxes (12" cubes) and proceed to scratch scratch scratch until all the wood chips are gone. There is about a 1.5" lip at the front of the nesting box, but they are throwing stuff right out anyway.

My question is - will this behavior calm down once they've all been laying for a bit? Do I need a wider board at the entrance to the nesting boxes? One of those fibrous matts that are harder to scratch up/remove? I'd prefer to have the eggs crack a bit less often, although I'll admit that when I *know* the egg was just laid in the past 10 minutes (I have a camera in there) and the inner membrane wasn't ruptured, I've been tossing them in a pot and eating them anyway. Well-cooked, of course.

 

[rosemarythyme]

New or soon to be layers are particularly enthusiastic about scratching in nest boxes. Higher lip would help. So would padding in the nest.

Free nest pads: Take empty feed bags and fold them to fit snugly in the bottom of your nests. If you have some excess bubble wrap sitting around, you can slip a few sheets inside the bags as well. Top with whatever nesting material you'd like - even if the birds scratch off most of it, the feed bags will still provide padding.

 

[rolohman]

Oooh - I have two 20lb empty feed bags lying around - I'll cut them up right now and give that a try. Thank you!

 

[rosemarythyme]

Oooh - I have two 20lb empty feed bags lying around - I'll cut them up right now and give that a try. Thank you!

No need to cut them, just fold them up to fit. It's all the layers that provides the padding.