Laying eggs in all the wrong places...

[protoman]

So my flock is pretty much laying on a steady schedule now, but I am having some issues with where they are laying. I built a group of roosting boxes, 3 up to, and three floor level. They only seem to be using the floor level ones, but that's not my main problem...although any thoughts on how to get them to use the second tier of boxes would be helpful as well. I currently have tried fake eggs and golf balls in the boxes to get them to start laying in the correct areas, but like I said before, they don't seem to want to use the second tier. My big problem is every few days it seems that I find one of the eggs either in their outside run or just in the middle of the coop. Now I wouldn't really care that they did this if it weren't for the fact that they seem to break them whenever they are not in the roosting boxes.

Any thoughts on what I can do to prevent this or ways of making them utilize all the roosting boxes instead of just the bottom 3?

 

[Fred's Hens]

Time. Young pullets just starting out, sometimes don't fully comprehend they are laying an egg. They seem to mistake it for a large poop or something. In time, they do figure it out.

As for the low and high boxes, they almost always prefer the lower boxes. It's natural as a chicken is a ground layer by nature. Once they are 4 months into this, they be more adaptable and you could remove the lower boxes and they adjust after a bit.

The reality is that up to 6-8 pullets all use the same box. That too is their programing by nature. Providing more than a 4 bird to 1 box ratio is a waste of time.