Nesting boxes made from removable dish bins?

[aart]

Looking forward to seeing your design and build.
From what I've seen bins/totes need to be stable from 'edge stepping' but still easily removable by keeper for cleaning or moving a broody.

 

[gtaus]

Looking forward to seeing your design and build.....

I have been taking a few pictures of the finished mobile chicken coop on the outside and will try to figure out how to upload them to my coop page. Still have some work with the nest boxes inside, but almost done. Working around a computer challenge at home as my main laptop computer overheats and turns off after about 15 minutes and my backup laptop computer suffered a hard drive crash last week and I don't know if that can be recovered. Probably have to order a new HDD. So I have a few computer challenges to overcome but at the moment they are not a priority as I have been busy outside in the yard building the coop, tending the garden, and mowing the lawn almost every day (I have 3 acres of lawn to mow and usually break that up into 4 day sections, then repeat). But pictures will be posted in the near future, I hope.

 

[wolfinator]

I use them and love how easy they are to clean. I should have thought about using them years ago.

Dish pans on left in soda box nesting shelves. The right has my Goodwill finds. Several of my 33 standard girls get into squabbles over who gets to lay an egg in the Dollar Tree dish pan nests. The top right nest for some reason they don't care for and rarely use, I even tried adding different inserts. Since taking photo, I've added an old molded pet food bin without the door on top of right nesting shelf (my broody Columbian Wyandotte is currently using it to sit on 3 khaki Campbell duck eggs and a banty egg from my 4 1/2 year old Showgirl - keeping fingers crossed. I also have an old wooden crate as a nesting box on the floor that my Showgirl prefers to use. The white dish pans and the blue containers are the only new items for their nesting boxes, all the shelves were either recycled or bought used at Goodwill. I'm still looking for more shelves to make into more nesting boxes, I have 25 pullets soon to start laying.

 

[gtaus]

I use them and love how easy they are to clean. I should have thought about using them years ago.

Dish pans on left in soda box nesting shelves. The right has my Goodwill finds.

Love the pic. It's just that easy I guess. Thanks for sharing your experience. I am more convinced I'm on the right path here in using dish bins as nest boxes.

 

[jkrueger]

I have been using plastic dish bins for 3 years. I only have 2 nest boxes since I can only have 6 chickens per our city ordinance. I fill bottom with fine pine shavings from Tractor Supply Co. Very easy to clean and disinfect if needed. In fact I usually just dump the shavings when it looks bad or someone pooped in it. I do put a generous amount in about 3-4 inches. With less I did have some issues with eggs breaking and Someone eating them. Good luck. I go for cheap anytime I can.

 

[Compost King]

you can get those plastic dish bins for at Dollar Tree... and I feel so stupid for not even thinking of using them for that. I use their mixing bowls with handles as my feed scoops. their measuring cups work great as smaller feed scoops ... and you can measure the feed as well!

 

[gtaus]

I have been using plastic dish bins for 3 years. I only have 2 nest boxes since I can only have 6 chickens per our city ordinance. I fill bottom with fine pine shavings from Tractor Supply Co. Very easy to clean and disinfect if needed. In fact I usually just dump the shavings when it looks bad or someone pooped in it. I do put a generous amount in about 3-4 inches. With less I did have some issues with eggs breaking and Someone eating them. Good luck. I go for cheap anytime I can.

Welcome to the BYC forum. Thanks for your feedback on the dish bins as nest boxes.

I, too, go for cheap anytime I can but the big selling point on the dish bins for me was the ease in cleaning. My dish bins are only 4 1/2 inches tall, so do you really need 3-4 inches of pine shavings? I was thinking maybe 2 inches (half the bin height) would be plenty.

 

[gtaus]

you can get those plastic dish bins for at Dollar Tree... and I feel so stupid for not even thinking of using them for that.

I think I first saw this concept on a YouTube video, and immediately thought this was what I wanted to try. I am not very creative in thinking, but can usually see the benefit of a good idea someone else has thought about or put into use.

I got a nice little black wire basket for collecting eggs from the Dollar Tree. Should be plenty big enough to collect daily eggs from my 10 hens when they start laying.

I have repurposed gallon and half gallon plastic jugs to make feed scoops and funnels. They work good enough and if/when they finally break, they are easily replaced.

I bought a black round plastic oil pan at the Dollar Tree to use a feed pan. Works great but I did break down and buy some real rubber livestock pans because they will survive the winter freeze whereas the plastic pans will not.

But the Dollar Tree dish bins for nesting boxes was just another fortunate find for me and I think it will work out well.

 

[Compost King]

Welcome to the BYC forum. Thanks for your feedback on the dish bins as nest boxes.

Dollar Tree has so many things that I convert into Chicken devices. I have made small feeders for Oyster Shells and or Grit from items there, I mentioned the Mixing bowls and measuring cups as scoops. All my cleaning supplies for the incubator and the mats I place in my incubator i get there. I was looking for nesting box items but had my mind on a box and not a dish/pan type of product and completely over looked the dishpan even as I bought some for other non chicken related projects. One of my issues with a dish pan is that my chickens would step on the edges and flip them over so I will likely uses screws to fix it on to a heavy piece of wood or something else to anchor it down.

 

[Sunshine Flock]

I'm not at all a fan of plastic. Some outgass strongly and take a long time for this process to diminish. Plastics contain estrogenic chemicals, even ones that are labeled BPA-free. I don't trust them even a little.

And eventually the only thing they're good for is the landfill, and that's never a good option.

Also, as mentioned, plastic is slippery. I've seen chicks slip and their legs slide apart, putting them in jeopardy of an injury. Full grown chickens are at risk, too.

I realize tons of people use plastic for feeders, waterers and nesting boxes. But I really take issue with our dependency on this material. We choose it for ease of use. It comes with a heavy footprint, though. When you buy plastic, even with a high recycled content, there's no escaping where it came from, what it contains and what's yet to be discovered about the harmful consequences to our health, and where it ends up when its convenience has run its course and we dispose of it.

Just my twenty thousand cents on the matter.

(ETA: I wanted to mention that I started a discussion on my Brinsea heater that's no longer working properly. It's made of plastic. It's really hard getting away from this material, and I did contemplate PVC feeders at one point. But I say no to plastics as much as possible.)