Poop board eggs and bugs in nest box

[Sweetheat]

Hi! Our first hen of 4 just started laying. Every morning For the past few days I’m finding an egg on the poop board. She’s never laid in the box. It’s a rollaway. I tried putting more hemp and a fake egg in the nest box to encourage but no luck. There’s no way for me to see when she goes to the coop bc they’re fairly hard to see from the house. I checked the roll away part this morning and there was a HUGE roach. I have a phobia. Obviously I don’t want that. We’ve tried dusting with copious amounts of DE but still cannot get rid of them and my hens unfortunately don’t like to snack on them. Could this be why they don’t want the nest box? Im attaching a picture of where I’m finding the eggs. This was when we first built it. The nest box is under the poop board where you see the waterer circled In this pic. We moved the water over. Maybe I need to hang the water instead of have it next to the nest? I’m new to this. Any advice appreciated.

 

[azygous]

Roaches certainly would be one reason the pullets aren't laying in the nest, but new layers are really a fickle bunch. It can take some quite a while to learn all the rules of laying. One issue is that they need to associate that urge to lay with getting themselves into a nest to do it.

For a beginner flock, they have no older hens to emulate. If you aren't out there at laying time to redirect them to a nest, you're going to have to just keep your fingers crossed they will get with the program sooner than later.

Regarding roaches, I lived for a period of time on the Colorado River in the southern desert, and due to the humidity, the roaches were numerous and relentless. They actually ate the Decon rodent bait I put under the house for mice, and thrived.

I got some boric acid (Borax), and dusted the crawl space under the house all around the foundation and under all plumbing going up into the house. No more roach problem.

It's non-toxic to chickens and other birds.