Nesting Material

[ear019]

What is the best material for nesting boxes? Do you keep the next boxes covered all the time?

Thanks!

 

[AlienChick]

I use shavings or dried grass clippings or hay... whatever I have on hand at the time.
I use lots of different nest boxes (whatever is available). They're not covered.
I have an old bookcase that I stood up inside the coop and the hens use this as their nest "boxes."
I guess you can say they're covered since the shelf above covers the shelf below.
I also have a large garden planter on the floor of the coop that my hens love; it's not covered at all; just in the corner.
I also place cardboard boxes around my pole barn in case the hens want to lay an egg while outside the coop.
I do not use straw as a nesting material since mites like to live inside the straw.

 

[The Old Whittler]

I've used straw and pine shavings and both work ok. My girls liked to pull the straw out of their nest boxes and into their coop which I didn't like. I clean my coop every morning and was constantly picking straw out of the manure making it more time consuming to clean. I want straight manure with nothing else in it if possible. My wife is big into flowers and flower gardening and we use the manure to make a manure tea to water her flowers with and the straw mixed in it just caused problems. Pine shavings worked better but they still pulled a few out, ate some and I didn't like scratching them off the eggs that were stuck to them. I ended up using a piece of carpet inside each nest box and so far that's worked the best for me. I've used carpet for a couple of months and so far I've had no problems with it. Now the eggs are a lot cleaner and it cushions the egg from being broken.

 

[mikecnorthwest]

Pine shavings. No issues.

 

[jondee]

I use pine shavings, which I buy in a big bale from the local feed store. The hens lay in 2 corners in the coop (one corner is a shelf above the other corner, so they're both technically "covered" areas), as well as in a pet carrier underneath the chicken coop (the floor of the coop is about 3 feet off the ground. I used a couple of fake eggs to get them to lay in the pet carrier; it was amazingly, quickly successful

.

Joni in CA

 

[Jcnlinda]

Do you think that a garden planter, on of the long ones would work for nesting? Or a 3 gallon or 5 gallon plastic planter? And how does carpet work inside the nest? Doesn't it get all yucky?

Thanks for your help!

Linda