Odd Question

[7 Biddies]

My nest boxes are about 3' off the floor. What happens to the hatched chicks who want to leave the nest? I'm afraid a fall from the box will kill them, but that’s where my broody hen wants to be. Any remedies?

 

[Kiki]

My nest boxes are about 3' off the floor. What happens to the hatched chicks who want to leave the nest? I'm afraid a fall from the box will kill them, but that’s where my broody hen wants to be. Any remedies?

Wait until all of the chicks hatch then move them down to a lower area.

 

[_-Captain BRM-_]

I let her hatch her first chick up there... But my problem was that the other hens would join her in the box and try to steal eggs. So I had a massive cardboard box that I kept her in until she was done brooding, I'd let her out once or twice a day, then put her with the flock.

 

[JubileeFarmer]

I recall a post some time ago about a hen nesting in a 10' hay loft and the chicks got down just fine. They are so light weight that they don't hit the ground very hard. If you are concerned make sure there is something soft below the nest for them to land on (e.g. straw or pine shavings).

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

My nest boxes are about 3' off the floor. What happens to the hatched chicks who want to leave the nest? I'm afraid a fall from the box will kill them, but that’s where my broody hen wants to be. Any remedies?

Make a ramp?

 

[CFLRanching]

We would put chicken wire /wall doors in front of the nesting box when this happened so no one else could get in. Basically just one big piece of chicken wire stretched across the opening and attached in a few places for easy access by us. We would lightly fasten one end and use that when we wanted to get in it. Once we turned the rest out for the day we would close the door to the coop, undo the chicken wire wall/door, remove the broody mama for a bit from the nest (but still within the coop). Let her use the bathroom (sometimes we would do this midday, let all the girls back in together and feed them (including the broodies) and then when they had enough to eat, drink and had went potty, they would head back up and get on their nest and we would close the little chicken wire wall door back up). We would do this until the chicks were a few days old too, and then if we had multiple broodies, we would gather chicks at night from other broodies as they hatched and put them with just one broody, and then move all of them with the one broody to our chick pen. It worked pretty well. If we came out to feed the rest (and we had already turned them out earlier) the broodies sometimes had a piece of outdoor carpet that everything was sitting on, we'd just put a little feed on the exposed end and they would snack on it while they nested.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm the one that saw a hen get her newly hatched chicks down from a 10' high hay loft. She flew down, called them, and they jumped. None were injured. My broody hens regularly hatch in nests 2' to 4' off of the coop floor. Those chicks don't get hurt when the broody hen brings them out of the nest to the coop floor.

One time I let a hen hatch in a nest 4' above the coop floor in a cat litter bucket. The top of that bucket measured 7-1/2" x 11-1/2". When the first chicks hatch they sometimes climb on top of Mama while waiting for the later eggs to hatch. Four different times I picked a chick up from the coop floor and put it back in the nest with Mama, probably the same chick. It was not injured in those four falls. The problem was that when the chick fell off of Mama's back she was so close to the side of the nest that the chick missed the nest and fell all the way to the floor. That's the only time I've had a chick fall out of a nest. I retired that cat litter bucket nest.

I'm not saying it is impossible for a chick to get hurt falling or jumping down from a nest. With living animals anything is possible. I've just never seen it. I'm not saying a chick can't fall from a high nest, it's possible. I've never seen it with my regular nests that have high lips if Mama is not sitting close to the edge. A nest 3' off of the coop floor would not bother me at all because of the height. Something else about the nest might bother me but not the height.