How many nesting boxes for 5 mabye 6 hens?

[wbruder17]

I have 9 chickens and 3 boxes. They would onoy lay in one until I put fake eggs in the other boxes. Now they divide it up a little better, but still wait in line for the box that's being used.

 

[SassyKat6181]

I put three double wides in for my girls and they all used the same one, until one girl got pecked bloody. I ordered some nice wooden eggs from McMurray and now 4 girls use the other two boxes and the remaining 8 use the favorite.....no more fighting in my coop.

 

[chickenlickin8]

My hubby built 6 boxes for our 10 baby girls....lots of choices for mine...LOL! No fighting over boxes in my coop. Fake eggs are the key to getting hens to use all the boxes. I got some white ceramic eggs from eggcartons.com! Fake eggs are also good to help young hens learning where to lay. Good Luck!

 

[chickerdoodle]

I have 3 boxes (each about 14" square) for 5 gals and put golf balls in 2 of them to give them the "idea." They all use only the 2 boxes so I put a waterer in the 3rd.

You can see it near the bottom of my BYC coop page.

 

[lulumammato2]

Quote:
Oh I love it, your coop is beautiful! I guessI was foolish to think I was the only one to think of the Eggplant. I hope I will have your permission to also use the name, only mine is not near as posh as yours It is helpful to see the size the BR are nesting in since that's what 4 of mine are.Do they lay well?

 

[chickerdoodle]

Quote:
Oh I love it, your coop is beautiful! I guessI was foolish to think I was the only one to think of the Eggplant. I hope I will have your permission to also use the name, only mine is not near as posh as yours It is helpful to see the size the BR are nesting in since that's what 4 of mine are.Do they lay well?

Our Barred Rock lays 5-6 eggs a week even in the winter! They are nice big large to extra large sized eggs too. "Beatrice" is very friendly, inquisitive and comical--you'll love your BR's!

Anyone can use Egg Plant as a coop name--I think it's quite descriptive as it really is an egg plant! I just got a brass plate with "Egg Plant" on it that I ordered and am putting it on their nest box.

 

[Gary Thompson]

I had 4 two barred rocks a speckled sussex and and brown one that layed white eggs we called her the roadrunner
I built one for each. They all lay in the first box. I am going to make the other three boxes a little bigger because I
caught in cold weather at night, two trying to fit in one to stay warm, it appeard. In summer they seam to roost.
This is my experience. What you do will probably work they seem to be survivers.

 

[kathyinmo]

I like "community" nests. Since they all wanna be in the same nest at the same time, I think it works pretty well.