How do you teach a chicken to lay in the nest boxes???

[mgw]

I have a bard rock and a gold commet that just started laying. I had put plastic easter eggs in the nest box but it didnt help, they laid two in the run and one on the coop floor. Then I cleaned out the nest box and nailed a 3 " strip of ply along the bottom of the box put fresh shavings and the fake eggs back in. Havn't had an egg on the ground since. Even the polish who laid her first egg today laid in the nest box.

 

[Cowgirl71]

My chickens love to lay their eggs in hay, so I fill their nest boxes with hay. Only problem is that the big flock is located right next to a huge hay barn. It holds about ninety 5' x 5' round bales and has all kinds of nooks and crannies.

So this flock only gets to free range in the late afternoon after all of their eggs have been laid in the nest boxes. But my other two flocks are about 1/4 mile away from any other source of hay, and so they dutifully lay in their nest boxes and can free range all day.

If you can find 2nd cutting or better square bales, they'll really like it! And when you change the nest bedding you can put the old bedding on the ground and it will double up as a feed supplement (they love to eat the seeds, tiny bugs, and some of the smaller finer pieces of hay). My chickens love it and rank it just below cracked corn (their absolute favorite food). Are my chickens unusually hay-crazy or what?

 

[Koi239]

I have 4 chickens. My Deliware lays every morning around 8 am in one of my two nest boxes. Another lays later a nice dark brown. A third lays in a corner under the roost where they poop. She has layed three that were soft shelled. The last two were fine but still on the floor under the roost. She lays either at night or before they are let out into the run. I put a large flower pot on its side and filled it with wood litter and a ceramic egg. That has not worked. I put the chickens up at 6:15 to 6:30 which is dusk here right now. I use sand as my floor litter. We put a camera in the coop yesterday and tonight we will view it to see who it is. I don't have curtains and will try that next. How often do you wash them as that seems such a dust catcher?