How to discourage laying eggs on the floor??

[bjw113]

Well, since I was last online, my husband has built a rollaway egg box and we are having success with that. We have 23 hens. Yesterday we got 9 eggs. My latest problem seems to be that not all the hens will lay in the nesting boxes. Since it is a rollaway box (plus my hens were born at the end of May 2010), i cannot put ceramic eggs in the boxes to discourage hens laying on the floor. Oddly enough, it seems as though, if a chicken lays an egg in the middle of the floor, the eggs go untouched. However in one of the corners of our hen house, we have a chicken who continues to lay there and her eggs get eaten every time. I have found yolk there 3 times in the last week. We have plenty of oyster shell out, 16% poultry feed, scratch, grit and frequent treats. My husband thought maybe we should put out fake coiled snakes in the corner of the hen house to discourage this?? Can anyone offer any other advice as to how to get my hens to quit laying on the floor. The rollaway egg box is lined with astro-turf and we cannot put pine shavings etc. and we had this problem before we put in the rollaway egg box. We had a few hens who were laying on the floor so this in an ongoing problem. Any other ideas for how to get the hens to quit laying on the floor. I would be extremely appreciative!

 

[the Precious Ladies]

My chickens did the same thing before, but then I blew out the insides of a few of their eggs and put them in the nest box. The chickens started laying in there and Ive had no problems since then. Wish you luck!

 

[Ranger 45]

I doent know about how to stop them from laying there but to stop mine from eating the eggs i had to paint some golfballs brown and put them in the nesting boxes. If the eggs u get are white doent bother painting them just make shore they doent have any brandnames on them or other writting. I would also suggest not putting a fack snake in ther beecause that will deture them from comeing in the hen house at all.

 

[deserthens]

I have tried placing golf balls were I want my hens to lay with no success.
Is there enough room in your egg box? Could it be that the spaces are all occupied when some of the floor layers are looking for a spot to lay? maybe your husband will need to build another nest box or place another type of box in the corner where the other hen likes to lay. Mine all lay there eggs in the same box (there are only 4 of them). I will occassionally get an egg on the ground. I think because their favorite spot is occupied and they won't use any other nest box.
Hopefully placing empty eggs in the area that the 'egg eater' has been eating eggs will solve that problem of eaten eggs. Maybe if they peak into enough empty eggs they will decide they are not food anymore. You sure don't want the ours to discover eggs make good eating.

 

[Rookie Rooster]

We have had success with all but one of our hens, who has taken to laying in the yard. The rest fell for the wooden eggs we got at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Now that most are trained, we've used one to replace the doorknob on the hen house.

 

[Rookie Rooster]

Just to clarify, we replaced the doorknob with a wooden egg, not a hen.

 

[Den in Penn]

Here I was reading it as the hen replaced knob with her tools. Welcome to BYC.

 

[gaba]

We raise breeder hens for a company. This year our birds came in at 18weeks old. They changed our shavings requirements to something that resembles sand a fine sawdust. We could not put the boxes down early had to wait about 3 weeks. They have started laying about 3000 per day but I have about 400 on the floor. I have always thought where they start is where they stay. I have never waited this long before lowering my nest. I usually only wait 2 or 3 days. No longer. I need some help desperately any thing I can do
Thanks

 

[gaba]