Nest Sharing--funny photos!

[fowl weathered friend]

Let me preface by saying I have plenty of nesting boxes and only four chickens, all of which are steady, daily/near-daily layers. But they will only use one nesting box! usually they wait in the coop for one to finish laying before the next one moves into the nest.

But this morning!

I caught Rosalyn muscling in on Claude before she'd finished laying. As you can see, there's another perfectly good box above them.

No idea why they do this

 

[princess araucana]

Great pic!
mine are the same way! all four hens will only lay in the same box. I thought maybe because I put a dummy egg in that one first. I guess they don't mind. they check out the other box but never lay in it!

 

[chicklady63]

Hens always want to lay where another one has laid her egg. Safety in numbers, or even just that it seems like a nice spot to both? Who knows. That's why placing the fake eggs in the nest boxes usually works. Funny though. Chickens can really be silly sometimes. Last summer I had about 10 cochin bantam and silkie hens trying to set on one clutch of eggs. When one occassionally got up to eat/drink/etc., the others would steal her part of the eggs. Then when she came back the squawking would start and she'd steal a few from someone else. Consequently, as they were all those breeds that really go broody, (cochins, silkies), and did it all at once, I had very few eggs last year. I even tried removing all the eggs & put them in the incubator so as to break the girls broodiness and they just sat there on nothing for weeks. I finally had to let them hatch a few chicks to get them off the nests & then of course they still didn't lay as they were raising babies. What a mess.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

I have 11 hens in a tractor with 3 nice, almost identical nest boxes. But they ALL insist on laying in one favorite box. Yesterday I found THREE hens all squished inside (it's a covered cat litter box) and another poking her beak inside to ask "Are you done yet? Can I get in too?"

I use this behavior to explain to my children the "brilliance" of following fads & fashions. It seems the hens don't want to think for themselves, but follow the lead of others. They'll see an egg in a nest & say "Since another hen thought this was a good place to lay an egg it MUST be true!" They really get interested when they see a broody hen on a nest. "Look, she thinks that's a good place to raise a family, let me lay an egg there too!"

= genius

 

[fowl weathered friend]

Glad to hear my chickies aren't the only lemmings out there!

But I went back out there to check on them and it looks like Claude may have gone broody! She fluffs her neck like those Jurassic Park spitting dinosaurs and roars at he when I tried to get the eggs. Then she nudged them--her egg and Rosalyns!--under her feathers and continued to grumble. I've never seen anything like it!

Guess I'll have to break her up because those eggs will only hatch by miracle of immaculate conception (I don't have a rooster). She'll get over it quickly.

Could that be the reason she wasn't eating as much today and yesterday?

 

[rebecca10782]

That's so cute, I love the second one

Before I saw about 50 posts with pictures like this, I was not looking forward to building 14 nest boxes. But now I realized they only need 1

Only four are laying right now and they have one box with a nest on either end. But they only like the one end. Once we found two of them in there all smushed together

They must feel safer

Most of the time though, they wait there turn

I guess they hold in their eggs until the box is free. We will come back out later and find four beautiful eggs in a pile. It is so nice that they pack them up so they don't have to inconvenience us

 

[lowcountrypoultry]

I love the pics!

 

[fowl weathered friend]

Quote:
I know! it reminds me of being a kid and my sister and I dancing in the hall, legs crossed, waiting for my brother to get out of the bathroom and banging on the door. I just imagine my chickies yelling at the one in the box: "C'mon Claude! You've been in there for, like, ever and I have to lay real bad!"

 

[sandyj]

Great pics. I especially love the 2nd one. You could enter it in a contest.
sandyj

 

[mrsengeseth]

they're practicing the buddy system! LOL

(Like never swim or go hiking with out a buddy)