nesting boxes ..where do I put them?

[equusvilla]

Where do you put your nesting boxes in the coop... beside the roosting pole? lower than the pole? on the other side of the coop? Off the ground - if so how high off the ground?

Right now my coop is empty on the inside 7' wide, 8'long with a human door on one side and a chicken door on the other. 1 window in the middle of each of the 8' long walls.

 

[hkwdesign]

I've been researching this also, and from all the advice I've seen they should be lower than the lowest roosting pole.
Some have suggested off the ground about 2', but some have said having it lower is OK too!
Plus have easy access to gather eggs with a back door of sorts.

I'm at this point also, and that's the advice I'm rollin' with!

Hope this helps, I'm sure some with more experience will chime in to help you out too - good luck!

 

[gryeyes]

Nesting boxes should always be lower than the roost bars.

In one coop with very little headroom space (A-Frame), my nest boxes are on the floor. However, when I built a new, bigger, better coop, I built pop-out, rollaway nestboxes so I could pick up the eggs on the outside of the coop. So the nestboxes are about 18 inches off the floor.

This does give your coop more floor space for the chickens.

 

[equusvilla]

Would it be wrong to put the nesting boxes on the other side of the coop - IOW , having the roosting bars on one side and the nesting boxes on the other? Would they use the boxes if they were on the other side?

 

[elmo]

Other than putting the nestboxes under the roost where they will definitely get pooped on (unless you use a droppings board on top), or putting them somewhere it will be hard for you to collect the eggs, there's really no "wrong" place to put the boxes. The chickens will use them once they get used to them, and you can speed that along by putting in dummy eggs (or a golfball) when your chickens are close to laying age. It helps, also, to leave a dummy egg in each nestbox so the hens don't try to lay all in one box, too.

I use plastic lidded bins, set right on the floor of my coop, my runs, and my tractor. It's nice to be able to move them. When I want to change out the bedding, I can take the box over to the composter, dump it out, hose it down, set it out in the sun to dry, then put in a sprinkling of poultry dust and add fresh bedding. And the plastic has no crevices that mites can hide in.

 

[Backyard Hencam]

there's really no "wrong" place to put the boxes.

That's how I see it. When we built our henhouse, it had four walls. One became the human door, one became the chicken door (to the outside run), one had two roosts, and one held the nest boxes (open lid to outside). It's worked out very well. The nest boxes are about 18" off the floor with a landing so that the hens can jump up then step in. If you would like to see the nests, go to the hencam below. Good for you for thinking this out ahead of time!​