should each hen have her own nest?

[mrdruids]

we have a big nest box (kind of a loft room) in our coop and that seemed fine for a while but now 2 of the girls are laying on the side of the house whats going on here?

 

[dsqard]

How many hens are laying and is your "nest box" one big room? You really only need one box for about every four hens but they do like their "privacy" while laying.

 

[LottieDa]

My girls like to have privacy when they're laying... I can't blame them. So our 9 hens are happy with three 12x12 nesting boxes. But I've been told it's totally fine to have up to 5 hens per box since they only use them when they're laying.

 

[mrdruids]

i only have 5 hens, 3 are laying and 2 will be soon. so i guess i shouldnt worry about the 2 that go on the side of the house? i just hope theyre not trying to hide their eggs from me

oh and the loft box thing is about 3ftx3ft

 

[allieloveschickens]

You might try closing them in the coop so they will learn to lay inside, otherwise the outdoor laying could become a very hard to break habit. I have five hens and one nest box- I tried to add another but they wouldn't use it! This morning two of my girls were in the nest box at the same time, goofy things. My nest box is about 14"x14"x14".

 

[cat1994]

They may be laying outside b/c they don't feel comfortable laying in the nest box you have now, or maybe one hen is hogging the nest box and causing the others to have to find another place to lay. That is what was wrong with my hens, I had 4 nest boxes for 6 hens (so I had plenty) but one hen was chasing all the other hens away not letting them lay their eggs in the boxes, they couldn't wait any longer so they had to lay out side on the ground. I got even more nest boxes further away from the first 4 so that hen couldn’t have all control over every nest box.