little help please V2

[yoyopops]

we (my wife and I) are new to the chicken raising (first year with the girls) and have a question. we have 6 RIR chickens and have a coop that has 3 laying boxes. the chickens at this point are to young to be laying eggs yet. We were told that you should make the laying boxes very uncomfortable for them by not putting shavings in them so they would not hang out in there. Well there is no shavings in the boxes and I have a small fan running in one of them. every night when we go to tuck the girls in we find that they are laying in the laying boxes with 3 or four in a box. We were wondering if this is going to be a problem once it is time for them to start laying. Will they not know that these are for laying only? or is it ok for them to hang out in the laying boxes? Thank you for your help look forward to hearing your comments

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

we (my wife and I) are new to the chicken raising (first year with the girls) and have a question. we have 6 RIR chickens and have a coop that has 3 laying boxes. the chickens at this point are to young to be laying eggs yet. We were told that you should make the laying boxes very uncomfortable for them by not putting shavings in them so they would not hang out in there. Well there is no shavings in the boxes and I have a small fan running in one of them. every night when we go to tuck the girls in we find that they are laying in the laying boxes with 3 or four in a box. We were wondering if this is going to be a problem once it is time for them to start laying. Will they not know that these are for laying only? or is it ok for them to hang out in the laying boxes? Thank you for your help look forward to hearing your comments

Sleeping in the nest boxes means pooping in the nest boxes - which means dirty boxes and poo covered eggs, which you don't want.
It is more effective to either block off the boxes (it can be a simple "block" - I used an old sheet that covered the entire frontage of the nest boxes) or physically move the birds out of the box each evening and place them on the roost. They are creatures of habit, so you want to build the habit of going to the roost to sleep - after a week or so they will likely just start going to the roost on their own and forget about the boxes as sleeping quarters.

 

[yoyopops]

Thank you for your advice we will start blocking the boxes off until they are closer to laying age hopefully we can break them of this habit. Great advice thanks again