Nesting Boxes inside or outside?

BGerres

In the Brooder
6 Years
Feb 22, 2013
10
0
22
We are getting ready to build our hen house. We are building it Shed style so if we ever stop raising chickens it can be used as a shed. With that in mind we have a choice to walk into the hen house each day to gather eggs from their nesting boxes or have the nesting boxes outside the hen house.
What are some of the benefits of both?
 
We are getting ready to build our hen house. We are building it Shed style so if we ever stop raising chickens it can be used as a shed. With that in mind we have a choice to walk into the hen house each day to gather eggs from their nesting boxes or have the nesting boxes outside the hen house.
What are some of the benefits of both?

The original plan was to have the nest boxes inside but decided to have them on the outside of the coop. Took up too much room. I like going in and gathering the eggs. The nest boxes could one day be storage areas and the coop could be a shed or playhouse if we ever were to sell.



 
My boxes are outside but I mostly collect the eggs from the inside.

Advantages: Big space savers!!! Ease of collection!
Disadvantages: Need reasonable carpentry skills to build and install well (I insulate the box walls and roof and seal well)

Inside box advantages: Economical. Fast and relatively easy to make anything into a nest box. Multiple rows of boxes possible for large flocks. Moveable.

Outside


Inside


 
Last edited:
The original plan was to have the nest boxes inside but decided to have them on the outside of the coop. Took up too much room. I like going in and gathering the eggs. The nest boxes could one day be storage areas and the coop could be a shed or playhouse if we ever were to sell.



Whoa-nice set up! My girls are so jealous! lol
 
Mine are on the outside. It is very easy to collect the eggs and to clean the boxes, change straw etc., the girls cannot roost on the top of the boxes and it saves a lot of room in the coop.
 
There is another option... My nests are inside, on a 20" high shelf to preserve floor space, and I have an access door in the coop wall so eggs may be collected from outside. It's big enough that I can pull the nest boxes out for cleaning (they're plastic storage bins). One benefit of outside access is that it's a lot easier to get folks to collect eggs for me when I go on vacation if they don't need to go inside the coop to do so.
 
Last edited:
Mine are inside, because I need to look/get into my coop daily. However I do have one outside because I have game.birds and I've noticed they like to lay.on the ground.


Same here. Mine are inside because it is mandatory that I look in my chicken house every single day. Some people like outside nesting boxes and like to collect the eggs from the outside but that is not acceptable for me. I have too many chickens and I have to physically go inside the chicken house to collect the eggs and to see what's going on in there. Every year I find a snake in the nesting boxes, so I have to do daily checks. There is also a possibility that a chicken may be sick or injured and may have gone into the chicken house to hide or snuggle in a corner. I would never know that if I don't go in and look. If that were ever to happen, a chicken could possibly die because I failed to check inside. With 100+ chickens and 300+ animals, it's almost impossible to do a daily head count. I could do that if I had 20 or less chickens but I don't. So my nesting boxes are inside for that reason.
 
There is another option... My nests are inside, on a 20" high shelf to preserve floor space, and I have an access door in the coop wall so eggs may be collected from outside. It's big enough that I can pull the nest boxes out for cleaning (they're plastic storage bins). One benefit of outside access is that it's a lot easier to get folks to collect eggs for me when I go on vacation if they don't need to go inside the coop to do so.
That is a benefit I had not thought of. My DIL has offered to watch the chickens when are away, but she is scared to death of going in the coop. She can feed, water and collect eggs without going inside.
 
we will be building our coop in a couple of weeks. we will have ours inside but with an access door from outside so we can gather the eggs without having to go inside. We will only have about 9 -11 hens at any given time so doing a head count while they are outside will be pretty easy.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom