My 2 " girls" are 2 years old and are in their second molt. All of a sudden instead of eggs in the nesting box ,every day I find a fresh pile of poop. It's like they're defying me. I guess I could block the entrance to the box till they got back to laying. It has been 4 weeks. I actually had to buy eggs . Horrors !
I have this trouble every year, it seems to be the same hens every year, it seems to start with the molt and continues out of habit, I think they are uncomfortable on the roosts, if no one is laying than I would block all the nestboxes for a few weeks and hopefully they forget about doing it.
oldhenlikesdogs has a good point there. Are they sleeping in the nests at night instead of on the roosts?
X3.....sounds like some nest sleepers. I, too, notice some hens tend to hunker down in the nest during molt, it is dark, safe and comforting to them.
