nest boxes??????

[lilbreeches]

my girls have started eating eggs.

anyhow, i am doing several things to try and break this habit. i am going to rearrange the coop as one thing. my question is this. right now i have a set of black plastic nest boxes that have 5 on bottom and 5 on top, stacked together. (they are made that way) they are sitting on the floor of the hen house right now. should i hang them on the wall and if so, how high up?

so mad at my girls right now!!!!!

 

[Mrs.Puff]

Yes-- your boxes should be off the floor. Put them up on the wall a foot or two high. Egg eating is a hard habit to break.

 

[jlmann]

I guess eggs would be the perfect food for chickens since they contain everything needed to make a chick so my thinking is maybe they are lacking something in their diet. Do you feed laying mash ? Do you supplement this with anything? In cold weather I always feed a little scratch grain and year round they have oyster shell plus I let them free range unless I've seen coyotes or foxes around recently. I 've seen on this site that a lot of people supplement with yogurt and or oats and sometimes scrambled eggs so maybe try to supplement with something? Hope you can get it stopped before they turn into total cannibals! Good luck!

JM

 

[flakey chick]

They best cure (short of a hatchet) is the mustard egg. Blow a few eggs out, fill them with mustard and put them in the nests. Good luck.

 

[lilbreeches]

k so i will hang the nests. i am going to do the mustard eggs in the morning. they already laid today and i stayed out there all morning. still they got 2 eggs. i think i found the instigator and moved her to another pen. she was pacing in the hen house and as soon as one of the other girls would lay, she would shove them out of their box and search for the egg or she would get in the box beside another hen and peck at her and try to peck under her. i wanted to kill her i was so mad!

so anyway, i am also going to hang curtains. will this knock them for a loop or should i just do one thing at a time (ex: hang nests one day, wait a few then put up curtains)

and as far as diet, they get 20% laying pellets and scratch feed too. laying pellets they get as much as they want. i do not have shell yet but plan to get some. didn't know they needed that if they were eating laying pellets. they also get veggies as treats adn the kids pull up green grass for them all the time. they love that.

 

[jlmann]

technically most of the commercial laying pellet producers say you don't need to supplement with oyster shell if you feed their product but they also say to only feed 100% pellets with no scratch no veggies no grass - so i' always keep oyster shell out for mine all the time free choice. Also if I feed scratch I put out crushed granite because it helps them digest the grains better, but if the soil where you are at is pretty rocky (with small gravel) a lot of times they won't need it because they will find their own. I've always thought it best to just put oyster shell and granite out in 2 different bowls and let them eat what they want. Hope you can get your birds to stop eating eggs

JM