Found these yesterday near the compost pile in the tall grass. I knew that the hens weren't all laying in the coop. We have found eggs in various parts of the yard. I did shut them all up in the coop for a couple of days to figure out when they actually lay, which is all day long...............I really don't want to keep them shut up all day. Do I just need to do that longer so that they get in the habit of laying in the coop? Or do I give up and just have an Easter Egg hunt every day?
Oh, those naughty little chickens! I think you are on the right track, locking them up to force them to lay eggs in the nestboxes a few times. You may also want to offer some attractive alternatives so you don't have to search through the tall grass when you let them back out of jail. It doesn't take a lot of building. I have a little plastic doghouse on a picnic table. There are dry grass clippings in there, and a little wooden frame to prevent them from kicking all be bedding out too fast.
after having to dig through the twig pile to get to our firts clutch, i put some hay into a decorative parot cage that's by my front door.. i put some golf balls in there and also put a big piece of fleece over it to make it a little more "secret" lol... next day, that's where the egg was... i asked in another thread about the girls not being able to get to it when it's too windy for them to fly out of their little yard area, someone said it was silly to have a nesting box outside the coop... meh.... they go where they want to go all day.. and they obviously weren't interested in going back to their coop to lay.. so might as well make it easier on myself.. lol.. i want to get some silk vines to intertwine on the bars of the cage instead of the material, then i'll take a picture of my "nesting box" lol... good luck with your girls
Thank you for your responses. Those are some nice alternatives. I just got back from my egg hunt and found another clutch of three eggs in the long grass right near the clutch I cleared out before. Two were in the corner of the coop and one was in the chair on the back porch! (we have found them there before!) Of course none were in the very nice clean nesting boxes in the coop.
evonne has the right idea. I've been thinking about doing the same thing myself. They lay in the planting table bins, the dog house, several different places in the equipment shed and some do lay in the hen house. If I just fix a series of nesting boxes on my back porch, i wouldn't have to walk all over the place to collect eggs.
I have a similar concern. Since I leave for work at 7:00 am and don't return until 5:30 pm I open the door from their run to the yard before I leave. I think they are getting ready to lay because a couple of them are squatting. I have watched them on my day's off and they frequently go back to their run for food, water and the occasional scratching for missed grains from the night before. I'm worried that they won't go back into their house to lay their eggs. They have a lovely nest box, 24" x 12" with golf balls and a marble egg in there and I filled it with the sweet smelling timothy hay they sell for rabbits. At one point I had the dog house out where they hang out in the yard in case they wanted to lay in there but all they did was scratch the shavings out of it into the garden. I took the dog house away so as not to have them learn to lay in it. What should I do? I hate to leave them in their run; 6'x10' for six hens all day until they learn to lay their eggs but I will I guess if I have to. Should I go ahead and put the dog house back? I don't mind actually looking in there for the eggs but I would really like them to lay in their boxes. Mary
I built a run, just so I would not have to go looking... I am and with just over an acre and half of it wild, to many places for them to hide them.... Course I could use the exercise
In the past, when I had a few hundred chickens on this place, I used to find eggs everywhere. When I stopped getting as many eggs as I was supposed to, I knew it was time for an Easter Egg Hunt. Sometimes I would find so many that I would be afraid to sell them, because I just knew that some weren't good. I began using decoy eggs to encourage them to continue laying where I had found eggs. I preferred them laying in the nesting boxes, but if at least I knew where to look, I could bring in my eggs. I wouldn't know how to fix the problem, except to coop them a few months, so they have no choice in the matter, but most of us like to use chickens as lawnmowers too, I guess.
