Nest boxes

[Hokum Coco]

 

[ChickNanny13]

My "nest box" is a huge plastic dog house. Have had 5 Wyandottes laying at once, now my 4 BOs all prefer it & won't use the second so I removed it.

 

[jthornton]

JT just takes out his mat once in a while and shakes it.

I can't remember if he did it with his, but with his system, you could also leave a one inch open slot across the whole front of the box, where the chickens come in, and when you take out the the mat, or even if you don't take out the mat, just use a whisk brush, to brush any dirt, or heaven forbid, poop, into the open slot, and onto the ground. The slot is way too small for an egg to fall through, or to bother the chickens.

My mat is stapled to a false floor and I take the whole thing out and brush it off or hose it off if needed... so far only brushing is needed but sometimes they track poop in on their feet. I only used the car siding because I had it a piece of 7/16" OSB would have worked fine. Good idea to leave a slot in the middle in case anything falls off the mat when removing it. I put a broom stick in so I can push the false floor up then slide it out for cleaning.


JT

 

[squadleader]

Good morning JT!

I might be misunderstanding, but I'm wondering if a slot in the middle, I'm wondering if you meant directly beneath the back wall, between the nesting box and rear collection box, would create a depression that would stop the roll of the egg as it rolled toward the collection box. Again, I may have misunderstood.

Would a one inch slot be more useful along the whole front of the box at the highest point? Just for a quick clean up, just quickly brush any offending material, poop, dirt, poopy grass forward to the slot, sending it to the floor.

Though thinking about it, you'd have to put a couple of support points along the front edge of the nesting box, that spanned over the open space, giving support to the nesting box floor, to keep it from sagging. Perhaps as simple as a couple or three, 2 or 3 inch carriage bolts secured along the front edge, that would nicely span the open space, and give the floor board of the nest support, so it wouldn't sag.

You could do the same thing on the other side of the wall in the collection box, except along the wall that's the low point. As we both know, there's very little, if any debris that comes past the ball wall of the nesting box though.

If your collection box is exposed to the world like mine, maybe lay a piece of hardware cloth over the hole to keep a predator from trying to use the hole to grab at the egg.

But due to the shape of the egg, and that it's up on top of the floor board, I'll bet he'd never be able to do anything but maybe touch it, but completely unable to grab or break it, unless he swatted it into one of the sidewalls of the collection box to break it. As usual, I've over thought this!

 

[jthornton]

My roll out nest box has an OSB bottom with one hole for the broom stick. The false floor has two blocks of wood in the front to raise it up. The carpet (and I know the ribs are running the wrong way didn't have enough left from the previous box) is stapled to the false floor and extends back past the back of the false floor. This puts a nice curve stopping point for the eggs.

This is a photo using my egg camera you can see how the carpet runs up the back. It's not fastened to the back just the false floor. I also put some curtains up on the dividing wall you can see on the left. It's pretty funny to see some of the pullets put their head through the curtain and pull look at their egg.


I'll get some better inside photos after work (pretty dedicated for self employed lol). I'm on my lunch minute now and it was eggciting for sure.

JT

 

[Boonie Stomper]

...
This is a photo using my egg camera you can see how the carpet runs up the back. It's not fastened to the back just the false floor. I also put some curtains up on the dividing wall you can see on the left. It's pretty funny to see some of the pullets put their head through the curtain and pull look at their egg....
I'll get some better inside photos...
JT

Can you catch a video clip of hen peeking at egg? Sounds really cute!

 

[squadleader]

Haha, mine do that too, but JT is smart enough to build a camera to catch it, I'm not!

I don't have a curtain between the nesting box and the collection box, but I've been in the tractor and seen a hen trying to twist her head around to get to the eggs, knocking them around with her beak, but never had one ever broken.

I tell my hens all the time, the egg's only yours while it's in you, once it passes your vent, that's my egg, so keep your little beaks off it!

Same goes for secret rebel bases. I've got a leghorn who decided for a while, my woodshed was her personal nesting box.

As any good Darth Vader would, I raid the secret rebel base, and make her
eggs mine!

This is a photo of the first time I discovered the secret rebel base. I didn't disturb it, I just take the egg if there's one there, better to know its location. Since I found it last week, they've actually almost exclusively been using the nesting box in the chicken tractor, as they should.

 

[jthornton]

I found my first egg in a 5 gallon bucket half full of pea gravel... a few days later I found 5 in the electronics compartment of the coop... she had been squeezing past the cardboard divider and laying in the dark hole she had found. So I painted the inside of the Mk3 black and the inside curtains are black as well. Sometimes my chickens teach me a thing or two.

JT

 

[aart]

I tell my hens all the time, the egg's only yours while it's in you, once it passes your vent, that's my egg, so keep your little beaks off it!