Laying/Nestbox question

[miccicke]

I am new to raising Chickens. I have 8 Hens that have started laying November 30th, and I have been getting 4-6 eggs a day.
Something I noticed, after an egg is laid, the other hens roll the eggs out of the nest boxes. I'm not sure why this is happening. No broken eggs yet, but I am afraid that is the risk here.

Is this normal? Why is this happening?

 

[Ridgerunner]

What may be happening is that the eggs get knocked out of the nests when the hens are rearranging the bedding to their satisfaction. This often involves a lot of scratching. Bedding/nesting material often winds up on the coop floor too. I solved this problem by raising the lip at the bottom of the nest box to maybe 5" high.

 

[miccicke]

Very good. I'll try to raise the lip of the nest box a little higher.
Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[ridgewood chickens]

I also put a lip on mine, only a couple of inches high, but works well keeping eggs and nesting material in nest box. My chickens tend to do a lot of scratching around and rearranging of the nesting material in all of the boxes, whether or not they end up laying an egg there, so the lip really helps.

 

[miccicke]

I raised the nest box lip by 3 inches, and no problems since.
Problem solved.

Thank you for the tip!

 

[ChickenMack]

I use those plastic recycling totes- they look like milk crates with a side cut out. They work great. They are deep enough that the hens can really hunker down into them and feel safe as well as allowing for quite a bit of straw (my choice for bedding) and there is no kicking out of eggs.