Roosts - Need help

[paneubert]

They don't lay from the roosts. They climb onto the board to lay. Also I use thr deep litter method so my poop and straw just get turned and breakdown together and go into my garden twice a year.

Then the question is why are they laying eggs out on an open board and not in the nests....seems odd.

 

[Ridgerunner]

My other question is why poop boards. I have one small board where the roosts go over the nests and i have to gather eggs off it every day! Everything else falls to the straw covered floor.

They will lay in some strange places, won't they. I've never had a hen make a nest on my droppings board but that doesn't surprise me, they will nest about anywhere.

Some thoughts. I don't know what your droppings board looks like but I envision something like mine, just a piece of plywood over my brooder. I also don't know what your nests look like. I think your purpose is not to collect the poop but to protect the nests. Can you slope that board so it's too steep for them to lay on? I don't know how steep that would have to be.

This first shot shows my main roosts. They are over a built-in brooder so I use the top of the brooder as a droppings board. Depending in how many chickens I have roosting over it and how humid the weather is I might scrape it once a week or I might go over 6 weeks between scrapings. You might notice the plastic bins I used on the end as my brooder did not go all the way across. I'm surprised they never tried to lay in those bins.

The next shot shows the juvenile roost over my nests. I use the top of the nests as the droppings board. One of the purposes I took these was to show how clean I keep it, not very. Maybe you can get some ideas on how to fix your problem from these plus people tend to like photos

When I catch a hen laying somewhere other than my nests I try to catch them actually on the nest laying. Then I lock them in the nest until they lay the egg. That might take a half hour, I had one go 3 hours. Usually I only have to do that once and they get the message but that 3-hour hen took twice. She was stubborn in many ways. I'm retired so I can try to catch them on the nests, if you are not around during the day it's a lot harder.

The reason I use droppings boards is that the poop builds up pretty thick under the roosts, especially when I have several chickens. I have to either mix that in with the bedding or remove it. It extends the life of the bedding if I remove it, I clean my bedding out once every three or four years in the fall and put that on my garden. It's easier for me to scrape a droppings board and put that pure poop on my compost pile than to clean out under the roosts.

We all do these things differently for our own reasons. I'd be aggravated if a hen were nesting on my droppings board. Good luck.

 

[jthornton]

They don't lay from the roosts. They climb onto the board to lay. Also I use thr deep litter method so my poop and straw just get turned and breakdown together and go into my garden twice a year.

A few of mine dropped an egg from the roost when they were trying to figure out the laying process.

JT

 

[deepbluesea]

I currently have one 1.5-year-old Bielfelder who now lays from the roost in her sleep. Weirdo.

Someone on here made roost bars that could be removed for cleaning and ease of moving around in the coop. Can't remember who, but it was in this section of the forums a week or two ago. If I find it I'll post it--I want to do that with the roosts I'm putting up this week.

 

[jthornton]

I cut some U shaped parts from plywood and screwed them to the wall then set my 2x3 (narrow side up because my birds have enough fuzz on the underside to cover their feed and 1/2 the roost) into the U. The center roost is held to the other two with some pins. All removable in a moment or two.



JT

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are lots of different ways to do that. For my tree branches I drilled a hole through the limb and support and use a large nail to hold them in place.