How many chickens per nesting box?

[pseudoyams]

I built a coop that has 5 nesting boxes. I am going to expand the coop as we are going to be getting 15 chix now. Should I add more nesting boxes in the new section or is 5 boxes for 15 chickens enough?

-Rob

 

[Julie_A]

Sounds fine to me. I have about 20 chickens. Currently have 5 nest boxes. They have one favorite box. Most of them lay in that one!

 

[TheChad]

I have 43 hens and 14 nesting boxes with that being said they only use about 4 of the boxes a day.

 

[cphilip]

6 hens and 8 nest boxes and all of them lay in one...

 

[gkeesling]

I have 19 hens and had 4 nest boxes. they primarily use only 3 of them. I did build a 5th one, but it has yet to have an egg laid in it.
Is seems like you already have enough nest boxes.

 

[joedie]

I believe the rule of thumb is 4 birds per box but lijke th others have said, sometimes alot more use a favorite box.

 

[Danigirl3]

We have 9 for 16 hens. They only use one sometimes two which is about what I figured, lol

 

[ams3651]

i have 8 hens and 2 boxes but they all used one so i took out the divider and now have one big box where they all lay.

 

[pseudoyams]

Excellent! Thanks for the info!!

-Rob

 

[RAREROO]

Mine are about the same 10 hens in each pen only use 1 or 2 boxes. They tend to laying the nest that already has eggs in it, so if you could try to leave dummy eggs in all the nest boxes and they shouldn't really care which on they use. This might help prevent breakage from all the hens useing the same box.