Nesting house for sleeping?

[broastedrooster]

My wife and I are wondering if we should be letting our chickens sleep in the nesting house or should we close it off until they start laying? Seems to me that it wouldnt make a difference and that they will still lay their eggs in it when it come time. So should we close it off?

 

[jthornton]

If they are sleeping in the nest box usually that means the roost is too low and or the nest box is too high. Usually they want to sleep up as high as possible.

JT

 

[Ridgerunner]

My wife and I are wondering if we should be letting our chickens sleep in the nesting house or should we close it off until they start laying? Seems to me that it wouldnt make a difference and that they will still lay their eggs in it when it come time. So should we close it off?

I don't know what your "nesting house" looks like. For most of us the coop contains both nests and roosts. Chickens tend to sleep on the highest point available but there can be exceptions. Do you have enough roost space, do you have a roost bully, can they access the roosts (get up and down)? Still if your roosts are higher than the nests you are usually in good shape.

It sounds like you do not have older chickens. I would want the chicks sleeping in the coop at a fairly young age. That way they know where home is. I've had some brooder-raised chicks start roosting as early as 5-1/2 weeks but most wait until they are 10 to 12 weeks old. I've had a few wait even longer. The configuration of your coop and roosts can affect when they start roosting at night.

I want the nests open and available before they start to lay for different reasons. You don't know when they will start to lay so you can't time it that closely. Often, about a week before they start to lay some of them start checking out potential nest sites. I want the nests available so they are on the list to consider. I do not want to teach them to lay somewhere else because the nests are not available.

I don't care where my chickens sleep as long as it is not the nests and is a predator proof area. They poop a lot at night and I don't want poopy eggs. If they are sleeping in the nest there is a reason. If they are going to sleep in the nests I want to know it before they start laying so I can correct the problem.

If yours sleep in the nests get back to us and we can try to figure out why and how to fix it. But you don't know if you will have a problem until you find out. The vast majority of the time if your roosts are noticeably higher than the nests you won't have a problem as long as you don't have adults already roosting on them. I don't see a lot of benefit in making my life harder and potentially causing problems to fix a problem that probably doesn't exist.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Not sure what you're defining as a "nesting house" so photos of the set up would help a lot in determining what's going on.