Nest Box or No Nest Box?

[Bacchus]

I have 10 chickens, but only 1 is old enough to lay (just got my first egg yesterday). My question is whether or not I should put the nest boxes into my coop? The other pullets are 8 and 13 weeks, so they probably have a while until they start laying... What should I do? Also, should I switch the feed over to laying feed or should I stick with the grower feed? I have no way of separating them at the moment, since I only have 1 coop. Thanks in advance!

 

[gritsar]

I would go ahead and add the nest boxes. I have yet to have an egg not layed in the nest boxes. The nest boxes were in place when only a few hens started laying. I think the hens that started laying later learned the right spot from the early bloomers.
With only one hen laying I would continue them on the grower and offer a small amount of oyster shell on the side for your one hen that is laying.

 

[debilorrah]

Agree with Gritsar on that one. The younger ones will learn from the first layers.

 

[zigzag3337]

I was in the similar situation that you are need now when my chicks were getting older. My solution was that I set up a temporary fence inside my run to split the birds. Once I did that and they got a little older, they learned that they could fly over the temp. fence, but couldn't get back into their pen. I then mad a hole in the fence for the little birds could go through, but not the larger birds. This made it where I could keep feeding them their grower until they were 18 weeks old (recommendation from Purena). Also, I keep meds in their water and if you give it to the larger birds, you have to discard their eggs.

As Far as nesting boxes, I was only going to have 4 boxes but my wife talked me into building 8 of them. I only have 13 hens which 4 boxes would have been okay. Now that they are all laying, they use 6 of the 8 boxes, so I am glad that my wife talked me into it.

some older pictures of my coop can be seen on my BYC page for ideas.

 

[Bacchus]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! The info was certainly very helpful.