nest box sizes?

[grammygail]

Hello-I am new to chicks! I have 12 3wk old chicks and will be moving them
to their coop in a couple of weeks. My question is regarding the size of the nest boxes?
We ordered an Amish coop that is beautiful but there a 6 nest boxes but small.
they measure 12in depth-15 in height, but only 10-11 in. width. My chicks are
standard size-Barred Rock, Red Sex link, Americauna,s and Buffingtons.
It will be a mess to pull them out and re-do, but we will if necessary.
Any thoughts on this. I don't want them to crowded to lay eggs?

 

[teach1rusl]

Yeah...especially for the orpingtons, that will be a tight fit. The good thing is, you have plenty of time, because they won't need nest boxes until they're at least 18 weeks or so old. And also, since you have so many nest boxes, you could just modify one or two. With 12 (eventual) hens, you'd do fine with 3-4 nest boxes. So if you don't want to do any drastic changes, you could cut out the divider between two boxes (maybe with a saw zah or something?), leaving one really large box, and 3 small ones. That way the birds could choose a nest box that "fits" them. My EE (probably your ameraucana) is small and could use a pretty small box. But your orp. and your rock can get decent sized, and they'd probably want the larger box. Not sure about sex links... And if they all end up trying for the larger box, you could always remove another divider from smaller boxes.

 

[grammygail]

Ok, great-thanks so much-we'll take out 2 dividers.