Nesting Materials

Picky huh?

Have you tried something like straw, cut very long? I went across the road to an old overgrown field and cut some very long strands of hay to put in mine when they were cleaning them out all the time, and it helped some.

 

The best thing I've ever found is pine straw. But it seems like it has just rained whenever I need to fill a nest so I usually use whatever hay I can get cheap. Around here that's usually Bermuda which is fairly long in cut and somewhat coarse. Works well. Lately I've taken to putting in the hay then a good big handful of pine shavings on top. For some reasons the hens seem to like this better than either one alone.

 

I tried shavings,straw and hay. seems there was a disadvantage to each,so what I did was put a little hay and pine shavings together in the box, that way the shavings dont get kicked out as bad. I tried with all hay and what they were doing was throwing up on their back then would get out and end up on the coop floor. Also they would steal it out of the other boxes and drop half of it,so I solved 2 problems by this. Some say hay attracts mites so I throw a little DE in the boxes as well. Straw was just a bust,its too stiff to long and I even tried a little recycled straw from my dogs travel box thats had been walked on and broken down a little,it was better but not good.

 

I started out with hay and that wasn't easy to keep clean. Then I switched to pine shaving from Tractor supply and it's great. I'll occassionally get a busted egg. I just scoop out the mess and throw some clean shavings in there. Do you have a lip in front of the nest box? I put one about 2" - 2 1/2" tall then fill it up. This way they can scratch up a nest and lay some eggs.

 

Hi there! I know this is a little late, but I have been using this http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3157992 in my boxes. It's like crinkled strips of shredded heavy paper. It seems to work well. Since it's crinkled, they seem less able to just kick it out, since it sort of holds onto the other pieces. I hope that helps!

 

Shredded paper seemed like a great idea, but not so much. I had just pine shavings but the rest of the coop is pine shavings so that didn't seem to work. I had a mix of paper and pine shavings and they didn't like that either. So now I'm trying hay so I will see how that works, if it is a bust I will try to mix some of the pine shavings in with the hay. Dang picky birds, well either that or they just don't seem to care where they lay their eggs.